The amended short story also announces the resignation of the dominance in radio and television drama of inner monologues in favour of extended flashbacks. However, little can be known about the development of some sequences of the film, because filming, which started in the summer of 1961, was abruptly interrupted by the death of the director in a car accident. Some of the footage – large parts of the camp flashbacks and a few shots on board the cruise liner Batory – were mothballed, because none of the director's friends and co-workers wanted to carry on with the project.
Nonetheless, The Passenger had already begun to live her own life. Posmysz’s short film story became the synopsis for the novel and was translated into many European languages. Over time, the novel has been adapted into a theatre play, successfully performed in Eastern Europe, and was even transformed into an opera libretto.
A few months after the death of the director, Jerzy Bossak, the head of the Kamera Film Crew where the film was being made persuaded Witold Lesiewicz, a close associate and friend of Munk, if not to complete the film, then at least to create a film essay about the film. However, the question of whether the picture that was created responds to Munk's ideas is still relevant.
The plot
The story seems to be the same. Lisa and Walter, a German couple, travel from America to Europe on a transatlantic liner. He is an employee of an international organization, and she hides – even from him – her past as a guard at Auschwitz concentration camp. In London, a mysterious passenger who reminds Lisa (an outstanding performance by Aleksandra Śląska) of one of the camp prisoners, Marta (played by Anna Ciepielewska, whose performance was awarded at the International Film Festival in Los Alamos), boards the ship.Memories that had long been repressed slowly resurface. Several years prior, Lisa, a loyal SS servicewoman, tried to discipline Marta according to all of the SS's 'pedagogical rules' – to no avail. Thus began a complex psychological game between the victim and the perpetrator. The German supervisor failed to break the rebellious women, who probably died. Or, perhaps, she survived the turmoil of the war? Perturbed by the meeting with the passenger, Lisa confesses to her husband the truth about her past, but it is not the full truth.