"A bone-chilling manhunt that jolts every nerve."
- TV Spot for The Passage
If the ad copy for 1979's
The Passage seemed a little hyperbolic, one could scarcely be blamed. The combination of an exciting premise, international movie stars and lush scenery couldn't help but promise entertainment. The task of bringing this all together fell to one man.
Given the many different kinds of movies he’s made over his four-decade movie career, you could argue that it would be difficult to put John Lee Thompson in a box. However, J. Lee (as he would professionally be known) was not one to back down from a challenge.
Thompson has written plays (starting at the age of nine as a hobby!), served as an actor and stagehand with the Nottingham Repertory Company and even served as a dialogue coach on
Jamaica Inn working under no less than Alfred Hitchcock. Following a tour in World War II as a tailgunner and wireless operator, Thompson wrote scripts for Associated British before becoming a director with 1950's
Murder Without Crime, adapting his own play for the screen.
A decade of films - most for Associated British - followed before his big international break with 1961's
The Guns of Navarone. The box office hit led to a number of well-regarded films: the thriller
Cape Fear, the historical adventures
Taras Bulba and
Kings of the Sun, the cult based horror
Eye of the Devil and even a pair of comedies starring then-neighbor Shirley MacLaine (!) -
What a Way to Go! and
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!.
In 1969, the sprawling Western
Mackenna's Gold and the spy thriller
The Chairman reunited him with
Navarone/
Cape Fear star Gregory Peck, though neither was as well-received. Into the 1970s, Thompson would be snatched up by
What a Way... producer Arthur P. Jacobs to helm two sequels to his hit
Planet of the Apes:
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and
Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud and a handful of made-for-TV movies followed before the first two (of ultimately several) collaborations between Thompson and movie star Charles Bronson:
St. Ives and
The White Buffalo. The decade would be topped off by a pair of scenic genre pieces: the drama
The Greek Tycoon and the WWII-set thriller
The Passage.
Adapted by Bruce Nicolaysen from his own 1977 novel, "Perilous Passage", the film told the story of a Basque farmer who, as requested by members of the French resistance, must escort a renowned scientist - whose research could turn the tide of the Second World War in the Germans’ favor - and his family across the Pyrenees Mountains to safety, staying well-ahead of a fanatically determined SS officer. However, the snowy climate proves just as treacherous as their pursuer and the scientist's wife has been ailing for some time and may not survive the journey.
The scenic locations were furnished by the Victorine Studios in Nice, France, as well as the actual Pyrenees mountains. Among the film's producers was Maurice Binder, whose title sequences for the James Bond series were legendary. (His own title sequence for
The Passage - white type against the wintry opening scenes - was considerably more low-key.)
Anthony Quinn, fresh from the title role of the director's
The Greek Tycoon, brought a nicely gruff attitude to The Basque (the character's actual name is never revealed). James Mason imbued scientist John Bergson with his usual dignity, matched by Patricia Neal (
Hud) as his dear wife, Ariel. Kay Lenz, playing daughter Leah, had already made an impression earlier in the decade in
American Graffiti and Clint Eastwood's
Breezy, though her on-screen brother was considerably green. The son of
The Sound of Music's Eleanor Parker, Paul Clemens made his film debut as Paul Bergson. Though he would be later known as a contributor to Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine, he was a few years away from his most memorable role - the possessed hero of
The Beast Within.
Perhaps it was Binder’s Bond connections (or just a strange coincidence) that led to a handful of series actors appearing in the film. French actor Michael Lonsdale played Renoudot with his best known role - Hugo Drax in Moonraker - to come later that year. (The French Connection’s Marcel Bozzuffi was his fellow Resistance member Perea.) Robert Brown played an oddly principled German major and, not long after, followed in the footsteps of Bernard Lee, playing M in the 1980s 007 series beginning with Octopussy. Christopher Lee - The Man With the Golden Gun himself - lent his considerable gravitas to the role of The Gypsy.
Much like Clemens, Robert Rhys would make his film debut as the son of a major character - the son of the Gypsy. However, this would be Rhys’s only feature film. Peter Arne (Straw Dogs, Victor/Victoria) made a late-film appearance as a guide recruited against his will by the Germans to scale the mountains. (Also, one can spot a young and uncredited Jim Broadbent - later of the Harry Potter series and Hot Fuzz, among many other credits - as a German guard assigned to watch over Leah.)
Though the biggest impression - for good and ill - would be made by Malcolm McDowell as pursuing SS officer Capt. Von Berkow. The role - sitting at a 180-degree remove from his sweet, timid H.G. Wells in the same year's
Time After Time and deranged enough to make his breakthrough role,
A Clockwork Orange's Alex DeLarge, look like an Eagle Scout - saw the actor going for broke, whether backflipping off of a rock after tossing a grenade at Bozzuffi or donning a chef's hat and smock to chop off Lonsdale's fingers. In a 1995 Starlog interview, McDowell stated, "We all knew real early on that the movie was not going to be any great work of art and so I was determined to have some fun with it. My attitude was that if I was gonna play a Nazi, I was gonna take it totally over the top and do it right. I ended up playing the character like a pantomime queen. What I was doing was so far out that James Mason turned to me one day and said, ‘That’s wonderful, dear boy, but are you in our film? You seem to be doing something different from the rest of us.’.” The impish grin on McDowell‘s face just before he has Lee's Gypsy set on fire is a perfect encapsulation of the actor’s approach to the role and the project. (For his part, Lee - much like Thompson, a World War II veteran - was upset with the scene where McDowell‘s Von Berkow whipped off his trousers to reveal a jock strap emblazoned with a swastika.)
Released by United Artists in the United States March 9, 1979,
The Passage would not be a financial success, spending as little as one week in some theaters. With the surprising exception of The New York Times - which hailed the film as "very well done" containing "a general air of excitement, suspense and horror" - the critical response was not particularly favorable, with one major critic calling the film "trashy" and stating further "McDowell's campy performance must be seen to be disbelieved". Even some of the stars expressed doubt over the film's prospects, with Mason telling his on-screen daughter Lenz, "Mark my words. All films that are predominantly in thick snow are a flop at the box office. Somehow, they make an audience feel uncomfortably cold and damp."
In spite of its initial reception,
The Passage has been appraised over the years as a solid, if unspectacular, thriller, helped by Michael Reed's (
On Her Majesty's Secret Service) widescreen cinematography, the committed efforts of its cast and its music score.
Up to this point in his career as a journeyman director, Thompson worked with, arguably, some of the greatest film composers to ever practice the form: Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Elmer Bernstein, John Williams, Quincy Jones, John Addison, Leonard Rosenman, Henry Mancini, George Duning, Lalo Schifrin, John Barry and Jerry Goldsmith. Soon to be added to this illustrious roster was Michael J. Lewis.
Born in Aberystwyth, Wales in 1939, his education at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama led to a stage musical, "Please Sir", which garnered the attention of filmmaker Bryan Forbes, who hired Lewis for 1969's
The Madwoman of Chaillot.
Whether the blues of
92 in the Shade, the wry Shakespearean mayhem of
Theatre of Blood or the rafter-shaking thrills of
The Medusa Touch, the Welshman's talent cannot be denied. His music for
The Passage is similarly robust, buoyed by a charge-ahead main theme that represents the characters' drive to survive their perilous journey.
Track-by-track notes:1.
Into Action - Following an unscored prologue of the Resistance members requesting the Basque’s services, Lewis introduces his main theme on militaristic snare and boisterous brass over footage of the Pyrenees. At 0:41, strings take up the melody. 1:12 brings out a somewhat apprehensive-sounding B theme; much like the main melody, a horn introduction is soon followed by strings. The cue fades out over a train arriving at Toulouse…carrying the Basque.
2b. Hesitation - As Renoudot guides the Basque to the bordello sheltering the Bergson family, cautious strings and drum beats build steadily in the background, accentuating the nobility of this mission.
13. Bordello Time - A source cue for piano sampled as the SS swoops down on the bordello, forcing an early departure for the Bergsons.
2a. Preparation - The Basque and the Bergsons escape the bordello, the nobility motif following their moves. Xylophone joins in halfway through as one of the officers gets the drop on them, but the Basque knocks him out, quivering strings sounding a death knell as the officer is choked to death.
2c. Planning - Von Berkow has captured Renoudot. As the captain monologues about his familial line and his embrace of the Nazi order, a new melody arises. Backed by strings and supported by martial drums is a repeating five-note horn motif, almost threatening the listener, “Von Ber-kow is here.”
3a. Further Preparation - The Basque and the Bergsons have made it onto a train. Strings suggesting the Von Berkow motif play as an SS officer recognizes the professor. In the chaos, the emergency brake is pulled and the Basque disposes of another SS officer. Strings and drums play as the passengers frantically depart the train.
3b. Thoughts - Nazi officers spray the departing passengers with gunfire, hoping to nail the Bergsons. Resistance members return fire, making short work of the Germans and the train. An ensuing explosion knocks Paul unconscious. As the professor cries out for his son, more Nazi-march strings appear. The Basque begrudgingly helps the professor rescue the young man.
3c. Getting Ready - The Basque and the Bergsons hitch a ride with a gypsy caravan. Unfortunately, they are stopped by the SS. Strings and snare coil around as Von Berkow investigates the vehicle. Leah (introducing herself as Petra) tries to draw attention away from her father hiding inside. Her excuse that the man is sick manages to work on the Nazi…and even though he socks her for her trouble, he is quite taken by this beguiling young woman.
3d. Further Thoughts - After a bit of forced “lovemaking”, Von Berkow confronts “Petra” upon recognizing a ring on her finger, the same one he noticed in a photograph. He leaves her alone with a young guard to watch over her, cello grinding away with winds and xylophone playing a tense melody. The Basque, meanwhile, was held captive in another room, but he slips away and rescues the young woman, a sudden horn hit for the guard’s knock out.
4a. Awakenings - The Basque presents the Bergsons with the Pyrenees mountains they will need to traverse. Rather than play up the majesty of the mountains, Lewis introduces a flute-based love theme (more representative of familial love than of traditional romance) that is abruptly cut off in the film with the sudden cut to the captive gypsies.
4b. Pyrenean Prospect - As our heroes scale the mountain, Lewis cuts loose with his love theme, giving special attention to the strings, harp and recorder. (The last 50 seconds are not heard in the film.)
4c. Trouble Ahead - With four soldiers and an unwilling French guide from the village, Von Berkow follows the family up the mountain, the music a trudging rendition of the opening credits, as if the players themselves were struggling to make their way through the snow.
5. Apassionata - Ariel Bergson realizes the end is near and that, in her weakened condition, she would be a drag on the travelers. The love theme is palpably distraught as she silently bids her family goodbye and wanders from their hut out into the snow. The Basque witnesses this, but says nothing. The music turns funereal as Ariel collapses in the snow.
6. Troubled Times - Cello and harp play the love theme as the Bergsons give their matriarch a proper funeral and the Basque admits that he has also known loss, as with the death of his wife. However, this pause has given the Germans a chance to catch up, the music taking on a darker character.
7a. Setting Out - One is unsure where this brief cue of xylophone and pounding horns was meant to go.
7b. Pursuit - The Germans have set up a barricade, stifling the heroes’ efforts. Electronics augment the worried-sounding strings before leading into a frantic passage for xylophone and flutes as one of the soldiers spies the professor stepping from behind a tree. Gun drawn, the young soldier approaches him before being felled by the Basque. Low end piano finishes the cue off.
8. Battle Sequence - The family attempts to get past the German-guarded bridge. Lewis provides a tense yet rousing accompaniment of snare, percussion and horns as Paul struggles to cross the underside of the bridge (it was likely assumed that the rushing water under the bridge would’ve drowned out the music and so, the last minute of the cue is not heard in the film).
9. Anguish - The Basque knifes another German, the action cue highlighted by xylophone and hints of the main theme. The music rumbles along as Leah gets behind the wheel of an enemy truck. It's not long before a nosy soldier meets his end at the hands of the Basque.
10a. Chase - Paul sprays a group of soldiers with gunfire, effecting an escape and allowing the action music to operate at a faster pace.
10b. Get Them - Having been stripped of his ranks for his overzealous nature, Von Berkow swears to capture the Bergsons despite the family being protected by having made it into Spain. From a snowy peak, the Basque teases Von Berkow by yelling out German phrases, hoping to draw his fire and cause an avalanche on the hapless officer. The majority of the music was dialed out of the film but, as heard here, this would’ve made a driving suspense cue, complete with a frenzied coda for Von Berkow being buried in the snow.
11. Nightmare - The Basque and the surviving Bergsons have settled in the farmer’s cabin. However, a bloodied Von Berkow has caught up with them, eerie, disorienting music (also dialed out) underscoring his gruesome massacre of the heroes…which turns out to be the officer’s death dream; he dies before any killing can take place.
12. Finale/Theme from The Passage - The love theme returns as the Bergsons say their goodbyes to the Basque. The melody continues in an exuberant string rendition over the end credits and one last shot of the Pyrenees.
14. Relaxing at Bordello - This source cue is not heard in the film. It is, more than likely, a first draft piece for the bordello scene. Given that the cue’s jaunty nature is at odds with the SS officers’ search, one can’t be surprised that the producers told Lewis to give it another go.
