The Passenger (1975 film)

For other films named The Passenger, see The Passenger.

The Passenger
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Michelangelo Antonioni
Produced by	Carlo Ponti
Written by	Mark Peploe Michelangelo Antonioni Peter Wollen
Starring	Jack Nicholson Maria Schneider Steven Berkoff Ian Hendry Jenny Runacre
Music by	Ivan Vandor
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	28 February 1975 (Italy) 9 April 1975 (USA) 15 May 1975 (Netherlands) 16 May 1975 (West Germany) 18 June 1975 (France) 18 August 1975 (Sweden) 8 September 1975 (Denmark) 28 November 1975 (Finland) 20 May 1976 (Spain) 12 August 1976 (Hungary)
Running time	119 Min Edited 126 Min Extended Cut
Language	English

The Passenger (Italian: Professione: reporter) is a film directed and co-written by Michelangelo Antonioni, released in 1975, in which Jack Nicholson stars as a television reporter in Africa who assumes the identity of a dead stranger. The film competed for the "Palme d'Or" award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.

Synopsis

The mutual admiration between actor Jack Nicholson and director Michelangelo Antonioni resulted in the psychological drama that is The Passenger. Jack Nicholson plays David Locke, a disillusioned American reporter who is sent on a grueling mission to North Africa. When he stumbles across the body of a dead man, Locke, long desirous of starting life over again, assumes the corpse's identity. He soon discovers that the man he's pretending to be is involved in gunrunning on behalf of a terrorist group. Making an acquaintance out of a mysterious woman (Maria Schneider), he finds a kindred spirit, and a woman that is as "lost" as he is.

Plot

David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is a television journalist making a documentary film on post-colonial Africa. To finish the film, he is in the Sahara desert seeking to meet with and interview rebel fighters involved in Chad's civil war. Struggling to find rebels to interview, his frustrations reach a climax when his Land Rover gets hopelessly stuck on a sand dune. After a long walk through the desert back to his hotel a thoroughly glum Locke finds that an Englishman by the name of Robertson (Charles Mulvehill), who has also been staying there and with whom he had struck up a friendship, has died overnight in his hotel room.

Perhaps, tired of his work, his marriage and his life, Locke senses an opportunity here to switch identities with Robertson. He carefully cuts and swaps the photographs in their passports, dresses up the corpse in his own clothes and drags the dead Robertson onto his own bed. Now, posing as Robertson, Locke reports his own death at the front desk, where the hotel manager mistakes Locke for Robertson, and the plan goes off without a hitch.

In London, Locke's wife Rachel (Jenny Runacre) has been having an affair with someone else but is guilt-ridden and torn by the news of her husband's death. She approaches Locke's friend, Martin (Ian Hendry) a producer at BBC, in an attempt to get in touch with Robertson so that she may learn more about her husband's last days alive. Meanwhile "Robertson" (Locke) has flown off to Europe with the dead man's belongings, including his appointment book.

While otherwise aimless, Locke soon discovers Robertson to have been gunrunning for the rebels he himself had been trying to contact in the desert. When he goes to check-out an airport locker listed in Robertson's diary, Locke is tracked down by the rebels' point man in Europe, who is there to finalize the weapons sale. Since neither man has ever seen the other before, Locke is able to escape the meeting without being discovered and ends up receiving what is the first down-payment in cash for the apparent arms deal Robertson had already set-up before his untimely death.

Later Locke accidentally spots Martin on a street in Barcelona, as the latter tries to track Robertson down on behalf of Rachel. Locke backtracks quickly and at this point bumps into an architecture student (Maria Schneider as the Girl) while trying to hide nearby. He asks her to fetch his belongings so he won't be seen at his hotel, where Martin has apparently camped up in order to catch-up with "Robertson". She tricks her way past Martin, and then stays with Locke as he drives off from Barcelona. They become romantically close, as Locke confesses that he has stolen a dead man's identity while trying to explain his recent behavior.

Flush with cash from the down payment on the arms he cannot deliver, and with encouragement from the Girl, Locke nevertheless is drawn to keep the meetings listed in Robertson's book. In the meantime, Rachel has received Locke's belongings that have been flown back from Africa. Having heard from Martin of his unsuccessful chase of the evasive "Robertson", Rachel receives a shock when she opens Locke's passport, only to discover, the photo of Robertson pasted inside. She now realizes why "Robertson" is being so evasive, and heads off to Spain to track Locke down herself.

Locke now begins skirting then fleeing from the Spanish police, whom Rachel has brought in on the search for Robertson, but the Girl is loyal and helps him evade them, providing rational advice. An ever more wary and world-weary Locke sends the Girl away on a bus, saying he'll meet her in Tangiers later. The thugs eventually catch up with him at the Hotel de la Gloria after he sends her away with a grim story of a blind man who regains his sight only to commit suicide, in a Spanish town (Osuna, province of Seville). The assassination takes place off screen in a widely noted, seven minute long take-tracking shot which begins in a hotel room, travels out into a dusty parking area and tracks back into the hotel room. All significant living characters are present in the last minutes of the movie as Locke's identity is confirmed in the presence of the Girl.

Cast

• Jack Nicholson... David Locke
• Maria Schneider... Girl
• Steven Berkoff... Stephen
• Ian Hendry... Martin Knight
• Jenny Runacre... Rachel Locke
• Ambroise Bia... Achebe
• Charles Mulvehill... David Robertson

Penultimate shot

The film's penultimate shot consists of a seven minute long take-tracking shot which begins in Locke's hotel room looking out into a dusty, run-down square, pulls out through the bars in the hotel window into the square, rotates 180 degrees, and finally tracks back into the hotel room.

• The location of the hotel is stated to be Osuna in the film. However, the bullring at the edge of the square is recognisably that of the one in the Spanish town of Vera, in the province of Almería. In a DVD commentary, decades later, Nicholson said Antonioni built the entire hotel so as to get this widely noted shot.
• Since the shot was continuous, it was not possible to adjust the lens aperture as the camera left the room and went into the square. Hence the footage had to be taken in the very late afternoon near dusk, in order to minimise the lighting contrast between the brightness outside and that in the room.

• The square was windy and the crew needed stillness to ensure smooth camera movement. Antonioni tried putting the camera in a sphere so the wind might catch it less, but this wouldn't fit through the window. In the scene it appears that the bars may have been adjusted to be removed as the camera approached them.

• The camera ran on a ceiling track in the hotel room and when it came outside the window, was meant to be picked up by a hook suspended from a giant crane nearly thirty metres high. A system of gyroscopes was fitted on the camera to steady it during the switch from this smooth indoor track to the crane outside. Meanwhile the bars on the window had been given hinges. When the camera reached the window and the bars were no longer in the field of view they were swung away to either side. At this time the camera's forward movement had to stop for a few seconds as the crane's hook grabbed onto it and took over from the track. To hide this, the lens was slowly and smoothly zoomed until the crane could pull the camera forward again. Antonioni directed the scene from a van by means of monitors and microphones, talking to assistants who communicated his instructions to the actors and operators.

Although it is often referred to as the "final shot" of the film, there is one more, which shows a small driving school car pulling away in the twilight some time later, holding on the hotel as the credits begin to roll.

Reception

Roof of La Pedrera in Barcelona, as seen in 2005. The look of the roof was quite different in 1975, during filming of "The Passenger." This is where Locke (Nicholson) asks the Girl to get his things from the hotel so as not to be seen by his friend from the BBC.

The Passenger has been considered remarkable for its camerawork by Luciano Tovoli and acting. While the movie has been critically praised by such movie critics as Peter Travers of Rolling Stone and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, it has also been criticized by Roger Ebert, Danny Peary and others for being slow-moving and pretentious. Ebert has since changed his stance on the film, and now considers it a perceptive look at identity, alienation, and mankind's desire to escape oneself.

References

Bibliography

• Arrowsmith, William; Ted Perry (1995). Antonioni: The Poet of Images. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195092708. 
• Chatman, Seymour (1985). Antonioni: Or, the surface of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520053419. 

External links

• The Passenger's Official Site at Sony Pictures
• The Passenger at the Internet Movie Database
• The Passenger at Metacritic
• The Passenger Meets History, by Robert Koehler
• Review of The Passenger in its 2005 re-release. SlantMagazine.com
• Review of The Passenger in its 2005 re-release. Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times, 11/04/2005
• Review of The Passenger in its 2005 re-release. Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 10/28/2005
• Roger Ebert's review of The Passenger
• Turner, Jack (1999). Antonioni's The Passenger as Lacanian Text. Other Voices 1 (3).
• The Passenger Fan Page