| The Passenger | |
|---|---|
 Italian theatrical release poster | |
| Italian | Professione: reporter |
| Directed by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Written by | Mark Peploe Michelangelo Antonioni Peter Wollen |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Starring | Jack Nicholson Maria Schneider Steven Berkoff Ian Hendry Jenny Runacre |
| Cinematography | Luciano Tovoli |
| Edited by | Michelangelo Antonioni Franco Arcalli |
| Music by | Ivan Vandor |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Cinema International Corporation |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 126 minutes |
| Countries | Italy Spain France |
| Languages | English German Spanish French |
| Box office | $768,744(2005 re-release)[1][2] |
The Passenger (Italian:Professione: reporter) is a 1975dramathriller film directed byMichelangelo Antonioni. Written by Antonioni,Mark Peploe, andPeter Wollen, the film is about a disillusionedAnglo-American journalist, David Locke (Jack Nicholson), who assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary inChad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the civil war. Along the way, he is accompanied by an unnamed young woman (Maria Schneider).
The Passenger was the final film in Antonioni's three-picture deal with producerCarlo Ponti andMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer, afterBlowup (1966) andZabriskie Point (1970). The film received strong reviews, with critics praising Antonioni's direction, Nicholson's performance, the cinematography, and its themes of identity, disillusionment andexistentialism. During the film's release, it was in competition for thePalme d'Or at theCannes Film Festival.[3]
The film was originally released by MGM throughUnited Artists in the United States, but in partial settlement of a dispute over a different project, Nicholson received the film rights and reportedly kept it out of video distribution untilSony Pictures offered to remaster and re-release it.[4] In 2005, with Nicholson's consent,Sony Pictures Classics remastered the film, giving it a limited theatrical re-release on 28 October 2005,[2] and releasing it on DVD on 25 April 2006.[5][6]
David Locke is a disaffected television journalist in northernChad, looking to interview rebel fighters who are involved in thecivil war. Struggling to find interviewees, he is further frustrated when hisLand Rover gets stuck in a sand dune after being abandoned there by guides. After a long walk through theSahara back to his hotel, an exhausted Locke discovers that a fellow guest (Robertson), an Englishman with whom he had struck up a casual friendship, died in his room of a heart attack that same night. Locke decides to switch identities with Robertson, whom he greatly resembled, and reports his own death at the front desk, the plan going off without a hitch. Locke collects Robertson's belongings, which include a pistol, an appointment book andpassport. He alters the passport to carry his own photo.
InLondon, Locke's unfaithful wife Rachel becomes guilt-ridden when she learns of her husband's "death". She approaches his friend, aBBC producer named Knight, to track down Robertson and learn about Locke's purported last days. Locke, having flown toMunich, finds an airport locker which contains a folder with a price-list and several photocopied pages illustrating armaments. Acting on a whim, he follows a white horse and carriage to a wedding in a baroque chapel, where he waits at the back of the congregation. Once the wedding finishes, two men who observed Locke at the airport confront him and ask for "the papers". After Locke hands them the papers from the locker, they give him an envelope of money and tell him that the second half is to be paid inBarcelona. It becomes apparent that Robertson was anarms dealer for the same rebels whom Locke had been trying to contact in Chad.
In Barcelona, Locke spots Knight, who is trying to find Robertson. Locke encounters an architecture student, credited only as 'Girl', while trying to hide in aGaudi building, thePalau Güell. Later (atLa Pedrera, another Gaudi building on Paseo de Gracia), Locke asks the girl to fetch his belongings from the hotel so that he will not be seen there by Knight, who is watching the lobby. Knight overhears her while she collects her baggage, and speaks to her outside. She offers to take him to meet Robertson, suggesting he follow her in a taxi, but she manages to lose him. She and Locke leave Barcelona, becoming lovers while on the run. Flush with cash from the down payment on undelivered arms, Locke is drawn to keep a meeting scheduled in Robertson's diary. His contact does not show up; the men arranging the arms deal are abducted, interrogated, and beaten by hitmen operating for the Chadian government.
In London, Rachel receives Locke's belongings from Africa. Having heard from Knight of his unsuccessful chase in Barcelona, Rachel is shocked as she opens Locke's passport to find Robertson's photo pasted inside. Suspecting the truth, she heads to Spain to find Locke, as the hitmen follow her, thinking they are after Robertson. Rachel gets help from the Spanish police in her pursuit, but Locke and the girl continue to elude them. With their getaway car damaged, Locke sends the girl away, instructing her to meet him three days later inTangiers. Virtually trapped, Locke checks into a hotel in the Spanish town ofOsuna, where he finds that the girl has returned and booked a double room posing as Mrs. Robertson. He again tries to persuade her to leave. She exits the hotel and dawdles around the dusty square outside, wanting to return to him. Soon the hitmen arrive at the hotel, departing just before the police arrive with Rachel. The girl joins the latter group, who find Locke dead in his room. Asked by the police whether they recognize him, Rachel says that she never knew him, but the girl says, "Yes".
During the 1960s, Michelangelo Antonioni had signed a three-picture deal with producerCarlo Ponti andMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His first two films wereBlowup (1966) andZabriskie Point (1970). His third project was tentatively titledTechnically Sweet,[8] which was inspired by the 1958 short story titled "L'avventura di un fotografo" (translated to "The Adventure of a Photographer") byItalo Calvino.[9] The title had been inspired byJ. Robert Oppenheimer's remark on the atomic bomb because of the "technically sweet" (mathematical beauty,mathematical elegance) theoretical problems it created. Antonioni first wrote a film treatment in 1966, and later wrote a script in collaboration withMark Peploe,Niccolò Tucci, andTonino Guerra.[10] AfterZabriskie Point (1970) was released, Antonioni spent two years on pre-production work, including location scouting near theAmazon River.[11]
Jack Nicholson andMaria Schneider had been attached to star in the project.[9] Antonioni had known Nicholson years earlier becauseZabriskie Point (1970) andEasy Rider (1969) happened to be filming near each other. Nicholson's co-starDennis Hopper invited Antonioni to the film's first private screening, after which Antonioni and Nicholson talked at length.[12] However, Ponti grew concerned about the enormous cost of location shooting and cancelled the project.[11] In May 1975, Antonioni told theLos Angeles Times that the commercial failure ofZabriskie Point (1970) had factored into the project's cancellation.[12] The script, translated to its Italian titleTecnicamente dolce, was later published by Einaudi in 1976.[10][13]
A low-budget film titledFatal Exit was in development for Carlo Ponti Productions. The project had been written byMark Peploe, who was the brother of Antonioni's then-partner,Clare Peploe.[11] Initially, Mark Peploe was to direct the film, with a screenplay written by him andPeter Wollen.[14][15] However, Ponti instead asked Antonioni to direct the film, mainly because of Peploe's inexperience as a director.[16] Antonioni accepted the offer,[17] with Peploe's approval.[12] Antonioni had noticed similarities betweenTechnically Sweet and Peploe's script because it had centered around a photojournalist. However, because of Nicholson's commitment toChinatown (1974), Antonioni had only six weeks to rewrite the script.[15]
Principal photography took place inTassili N'Ajjer,[18] theIllizi Province ofAlgeria[19] (to depictChad),Brunswick Centre,[20][21][22]London,St. Georg (Bogenhausen) [de],[22]Munich,[19]Las Ramblas,[20]Barcelona[19] and locations across south-easternSpain (Almería,[19] Madrid,[19] Seville,[19] Malaga[19] Sorbas[20]) throughout mid-to-late 1973.[23][failed verification]
In a long take, early in the film, Nicholson's character Locke is switching photos, between Locke's and Robertson's passports, in his hotel room, with a tape recording playing an earlier conversation between Locke and Robertson, now dead. The camera pans for 25 seconds, without a cut, to hold on Robertson's now live appearance on the balcony, when Locke appears beside him and the two of them continue talking (i.e. an in-camera in-single-shot flashback).
The execution of a prisoner in this film is not staged. It consists of actual footage of a real execution that the crew filmed while on location.[24][25]
The film'spenultimate shot is a six-minute, 32-secondlong taketracking shot which begins in Locke's hotel room, looking out onto a dusty square, pushes out through the bars of the hotel window into the square, rotates 180 degrees, and finally tracks back to a close exterior view of the room's interior.[26]
Although this is often referred to as the "final shot" of the film, it is not; the last passage shows a small driving school car pulling away in the twilight, and the camera holds on the hotel as the film's credits begin to roll.
The Passenger was released byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer throughUnited Artists in the United States on 9 April 1975. Years after the film's release, Nicholson had developed and planned to star in a film project, but MGM abandoned the project. Nicholson demanded compensation, to which MGM relinquishedThe Passenger to Nicholson's ownership.[4] For nearly three decades, Nicholson kept the film from circulation, although it was briefly released byWarner Home Video on videocassette during the 1980s.[citation needed] In 2003,Sony Pictures Classics approached Nicholson with an offer to restore and re-release the film.[4] On 28 October 2005, the film was given a limited release in the United States,[2] in which it earned $768,744 worldwide.[1] The film was released on DVD on 25 April 2006.
Vincent Canby ofThe New York Times wrote the film was "a suspense melodrama, a story so basically conventional that it isn't until you're at least half‐way through it you realize it's a magnificent nightmare, and that you are on the inside looking out."[30]Gene Siskel of theChicago Tribune gave the film a complete four-star review, stating "The Passenger is a complex film that is obvious only in its physical beauty. And if you don't hook into that cerebral adventure story, you'll probably find the pace of the chase story to be much too slow. Viewers who connect to that other layer, however, will find a remarkable richness of image and idea ... Nicholson turns in another superior performance, managing to communicate his own brand of wise anger without puncturing Antonioni's grand design."[31]Jay Cocks, reviewing forTime magazine, praised the film's cinematography, writing the film "has some of the boldest and most supple imagery that Antonioni has achieved in years—more memorable than anything inBlow-Up or the unfortunateZabriskie Point ...The Passenger ends with a scene that seems destined for cinematic history."[32]
Kevin Thomas of theLos Angeles Times called the film "a masterpiece of visual beauty and rigorous artistry that is as tantalizing as it is hypnotic. It is a major achievement by one of the world's great film-makers and boasts still another of those splendid portrayals from Nicholson".[33]Penelope Gilliatt ofThe New Yorker called the film a "triumph of technical invention that stretches the wizardly vocabulary of film as he has never stretched it before".[34] Hank Werba ofVariety wrote Antonioni "laboriously hand-fashioned an excellent film spectacle that is so marked by his own style and anguish reflections on contemporary life as to encourage further collaborative encounters."[35]
Roger Ebert initially gave the film a negative review in 1975. In 2005, he revisited the film with a more positive review, writing that it was a perceptive look at identity, alienation and the human desire to escape oneself. He also praised Schneider's performance as "a performance of breathtaking spontaneity."[36]John Simon, in his 1983 bookSomething to Declare, wrote disapprovingly that "Emptiness is everywhere: in landscapes and townscapes, churches and hotel rooms, and most of all in the script. Never was dialogue more pretentiously vacuous, plot more rudimentary yet preposterous, action more haphazard and spasmodic, characterization more tenuous and uninvolving, filmmaking more devoid of all but postures and pretensions".[37]
In 2012,The Passenger was ranked 110th on theSight & Sound critics' poll.[38] The film was included byEmpire magazine as one ofThe 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The magazine praised the film's camerawork (byLuciano Tovoli) and the performances, particularly Nicholson's quiet and reflective performance.[39] On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 88% of 77 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Antonioni's classic, a tale of lonely, estranged characters on a journey through the mysterious landscapes of identity, shimmers with beauty and uncertainty."[40] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 90 based on 20 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[41]
Michelangelo Antonioni
I just discovered that the film is playing in my hometown of Flint, MI in the coming weeks, which is exciting to me, even from afar.
