On an ocean liner, a German emigré, Liza (Aleksandra Slaska), returning to her homeland for the first time since the war, espies a familiar face from her years in the concentration camp. The image of Marta (Anna Ciepielewska) brings on a flood of discomfitting memories which Liza attempts to "re-edit" into a new truth-for Liza was a guard in the camps, Marta her prize prisoner. "I was as powerless as she," Liza avers in the first edit of her story; but a second take reveals the elaborate mental tortures she subjected Marta to in the name of saving her physical being. The film's insights into the relationship of oppressor to oppressed are nothing short of stunning. Marta's crime? "She acted as if she were free." This is a female counterpart to The Boxer and Death-two women, one a prisoner, the other a guard, locked in a psychic duel of which the prisoner is, ironically, bound to be the victor. For Andrzej Munk, "the past can be mystified and closed off in history, but not in an individual conscience, which remains open to the past until the moment of death" (M. and A. Liehm). Munk, co-founder of the Polish Film School, was killed in an automobile accident before completing The Passenger; nevertheless, it is widely considered to be the pinnacle of his career. The film was pieced together according to Munk's screenplay by his colleagues, who used still photographs Munk had shot of the unfinished scenes (those on the ocean liner) with such artistic skill that they create a powerful film statement. Present and past are locked in their own psychic battle-the past a flowing, evolving, widescreen narrative, the present a cold, still light.