It is very unfortunate that this movie wasn't finished, but it's also a little bit more unfortunate that people chose to finish it to the extant state it currently holds. Andrzej Munk's bits and pieces about a Nazi Concentration Camp officer and her relationship to a young Jewish woman she seems somewhat obsessed with has some quite obvious power. What he managed to capture before his untimely death is gorgeous moments of uncertainty, uncertainty in the actions, in the motivations, and in the ambiguous acting of the lead character. To be sure, the finished product would have had a lot to say about the strange relationship between life and death the Nazi's had while running the camps.
Unfortunately, he died before he finished. So others took on the task of finishing it, filling the holes with sometimes literal voice-over ruminations of what Munk might have intended. So we have the intentional ambiguity of the primary text and the ambiguity of what that "intentional" was, meaning we're basically treated to an incomplete movie that basically begs for us to try to figure out how to complete it ourselves. The problem with that is that we already have that historical narrative with the Holocaust anyway, and the nature of the imagery Munk shot shows that he was leading somewhere significant.
For one thing, much of the horrible imagery of the Holocaust, the stuff that's become trope for narratives about it, is kept in the background: the foreground is the face of the actress Alecsandra Slazka, which is achingly compelling and probably the reason why others felt it was necessary to finish the work despite itself. Many of the actions are not actually resolved, and plot holes and gaps that are literally unfilmed parts of the plots and missing imagery leave some unintended ambiguities that simply detract from the main story. It's clear that Munk was going somewhere. This film doesn't take it there. So it's kind of depressing to watch it go nowhere.
--PolarisDiB
Unfortunately, he died before he finished. So others took on the task of finishing it, filling the holes with sometimes literal voice-over ruminations of what Munk might have intended. So we have the intentional ambiguity of the primary text and the ambiguity of what that "intentional" was, meaning we're basically treated to an incomplete movie that basically begs for us to try to figure out how to complete it ourselves. The problem with that is that we already have that historical narrative with the Holocaust anyway, and the nature of the imagery Munk shot shows that he was leading somewhere significant.
For one thing, much of the horrible imagery of the Holocaust, the stuff that's become trope for narratives about it, is kept in the background: the foreground is the face of the actress Alecsandra Slazka, which is achingly compelling and probably the reason why others felt it was necessary to finish the work despite itself. Many of the actions are not actually resolved, and plot holes and gaps that are literally unfilmed parts of the plots and missing imagery leave some unintended ambiguities that simply detract from the main story. It's clear that Munk was going somewhere. This film doesn't take it there. So it's kind of depressing to watch it go nowhere.
--PolarisDiB