The Passenger (1975)
"Professione: reporter" (original title)

A frustrated war correspondent, unable to find the war he's been asked to cover, takes the risky path of co-opting the I.D. of a dead arms dealer acquaintance.

Director:

Michelangelo Antonioni

Writers:

Mark Peploe (story), Mark Peploe (screenplay),

Stars:

Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre

4 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Jack Nicholson	...	David Locke
Maria Schneider	...	Girl
Jenny Runacre	...	Rachel Locke
Ian Hendry	...	Martin Knight
Steven Berkoff	...	Stephen
Ambroise Bia	...	Achebe
José María Caffarel	...	Hotel Keeper
James Campbell	...	Witch Doctor
Manfred Spies	...	German Stranger
Jean-Baptiste Tiemele	...	Murderer
Ángel del Pozo	...	Police inspector
Charles Mulvehill	...	David Robertson (as Chuck Mulvehill)
Narciso Pula	...	Murderer's accomplice

Storyline

A journalist researching a documentary in the Sahara Desert meets a gunrunner who dies suddenly. When the journalist notices that they have a similar appearance, he assumes the recently deceased's identity and accepts the consequences that it brings.

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Plot Keywords:

desert | identity | reporter | sahara desert | journalist | 

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Taglines:

I used to be somebody else...but I traded him in.

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for some violence, nudity and language

Details

Official Sites:

Sony Classics [us]

Country:

Italy Spain France

Language:

English Spanish German French

Release Date:

9 April 1975 (USA)

Also Known As:

Beruf: Reporter

Filming Locations:

Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$24,157 (USA) (28 October 2005)

Gross:

$619,744 (USA) (10 March 2006)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Compagnia Cinematografica Champion, CIPI Cinematografica S.A., Les Films Concordia

Technical Specs

Runtime:

126 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The execution of a prisoner in this film is not staged. It consists of actual footage of a real execution.

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Quotes

Witch Doctor: Your question are much more revealing about yourself than my answer would be about me.

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Connections

Referenced in Siskel & Ebert: On the Sunny Side of the Screen (1994)

User Reviews

Re-release of a classic

Michelangelo Antonioni: The Passenger (Italy/France 1975). 128 minutes. Release by Sony Classics Pictures release. Release date: October 28, 2005. Shown at the New York Film Festival: October 8, 2005.

Thirty years later, Michelangelo Antonioni's re-released "The Passenger" is looking very good, and so are Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, as the journalist who takes a dead man's identity in the Sahara and the girl he meets in Barcelona who decides to tag along. David Locke (Nicholson) takes the passport of a man named Robertson who he's had a few drinks with in a hotel. Before that we see Locke experience frustration, giving away cigarettes to men in turbans who say nothing, abandoned by a boy guide, dumping a Land Rover stuck in the sand. Later we see films that show as a journalist he was subservient to bad men. Locke has Robertson's appointment book which leads him to Munich, then various points in Spain. He learns Robertson was a committed man taking risks: he sold arms to revolutionaries whose causes he thought were just. He gets a huge down-payment.

Then Locke's wife gets a tape of him talking to Robertson and his passport with Robertson's photo pasted into it -- and she gets the picture.

Changing your identity and using someone else's isn't just an existential act, it's also a criminal one. Locke's gambit is hopeless: he winds up fleeing from himself. The film skillfully gives its action story an existential underpinning. The chase keeps up a rapid pace, like the Bourne franchise, but it has time to contemplate Locke's old and new lives in a metaphorical story he tells Schneider about a blind man that explains how he ends up.

Antonioni is great at little incidentals -- a girl chewing bubblegum, a man reciting in a Gaudi building. And at the end, people coming and going in a desolate plaza outside a bullfighting amphitheater. The locations provide exotic glamor. The camera-work of course is wonderful. In retrospect now one can see this was definitely a culmination for Antonioni. He thought it technically his best film. This is the director's preferred European version, originally released as "Professione: Reporter."