Film Review: The Passage (1979)

There are bad films, there are very bad films and there are films that are even worse simply for being made by people who should have known better. The Passage, 1979 war action film directed by J. Lee Thompson is one of such films. The plot Based on the novel by Bruce Nicolaysen, who also wrote the script, begins during German occupation of France in Second World War. The unnamed protagonist (played by Anthony Quinn) is a Basque mountain shepherd hired by French Resistance to guide Professor Bergson (played by James Mason), important scientist wanted by Nazis for his weapons expertise, over the Pyrenees to the relative safety of neutral Spain. The Basque gets second thoughts after discovering that he would have to guide not only Bergson, but also his teenage son Paul (played by Paul Clemens) and daughter Leah (played by Kay Lenz), as well wife Ariel (played by Patricia Neal), frail woman unlikely to survive long and perilous journey. Apart from the elements, Bergsons also have to deal with Gestapo and Captain von Berkow (played by Malcom McDowell), its sadistic officer determined to catch them at any cost.

Based on the premise and names involved, The Passage looked good on paper. The relatively simple plot that takes place in the mountains and forests would have provided both for western-style action and strong drama. Its director J. Lee Thompson became famous thanks to The Guns of Navarone, WW2 action classic with always dependable Anthony Quinn as one of ist stars. What the audience get instead is an almost complete mess. The film editing is incomprehensibly bad, ruining many of potentially great scenes and giving the film uninentionally “artsy” look. Cinematography is also atrocious, making some scenes too dark and almost incomprehensible. The script adds to the confusion by twists that come out of nowhere, like the Resistance suddenly engaging in big battle with Germans guarding the passenger train or the protagonist suddenly arriving at heavily-guarded hotel to rescue Leah from von Berkow’s captivity. This, of course, happen only after von Berkow had his way with unfortunate girl, displayed in a way uncharacteristically graphic even for lax 1970s standards, and after that The Passage looks more like cheap Nazisploation piece like those that sparked 1980s “video nasties” moral panic than like serious big budget WW2-themed production it was supposed to be. Bergsons are near the end also inexplicably transformed from helpless refugees into small army able to defeat dozens of well-armed and well-trained Wehrmacht soldiers. Thompson manages to ruin things even at the end, when it toys with cliches borrowed from horror genre, but the scene is again mishandled with the voice over narration that explain it as someone’s bad dream.

Not all things are bad in The Passage. Patricia Neal uses some of her real life health issues to deliver strong performance as unfortunate Mrs. Bergson, and her death scene, one of the rare that was edited in an old fashioned and disciplined way, is the most moving moment of the film. The most memorable element is, however, performance of McDowell who deliberately goes over the top as sadistic villain who humiliates, tortures, mutilates, rapes and murders people with a lot of macabre ingenuity and unhidden delight. Many years afterwards McDowell said that he knew that The Passage would be bad film, so he deliberately tried to give it “campy” atmosphere by being unhinged in his role and trying to undo himself as Alex in A Clockwork Orange. His prediction proved right and The Passage was savaged by critics only to quickly sink into oblivion; those who remember film do it mostly due to McDowell in one of the most effective roles of his career. Sadly, that performance requires too much sacrifices from the audience that lacks either masochism or the ability to appreciate extraordinarily bad films.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/51543-the-passage
Critic: A