Aleksandra Slaska portrays a German matron taking a long ocean voyage with her husband. While roaming the deck, she spots a passenger she thinks she recognizes. That she does: The passenger (Anna Ciepielewska) had been an inmate at Auchwitz, where Slaska served as a guard. An alternately realistic and illusory study in guilt and retribution, The Passenger (original title: Pasazerka) was halfway through production in 1961 when its director, Andrzej Munk, was killed in an auto accident. Munk's friends loyally tried to complete the project, bridging a few scenes with still pictures (in the manner of "restored" film classics like the 1937 Lost Horizon and the 1954 A Star is Born). Finally released in Poland in 1963, The Passenger didn't make it to the US until 1970.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
- Haunted By The Past
- Concentration-camp
- Life Under Occupation
- POW-camp
- Watchman
- Guard
- Passenger
- Polish [nationality]
- Schooner
- Ship
- In A Minor Key
- Cruise
- Covetous
- Envy
- German [nationality]