Professione: reporter (1975)

Director:

Michelangelo Antonioni

Writers:

Mark Peploe (story)
Mark Peploe (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

9 April 1975 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

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

Plot:

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.

Plot Keywords:

Desert | Identity | Sahara Desert | Reporter | Journalist

Awards:

4 wins & 1 nomination

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

Also Known As:

The Passenger (International: English title) (UK)
El reportero (Spain)
Profession: reporter (France)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for some violence, nudity and language. (edited version)

Runtime:

126 min | 119 min

Country:

Italy | Spain | France

Language:

English | Spanish | German | French

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:PG-13 | Argentina:13 | Iceland:L | Singapore:PG | Australia:M | Italy:T | Brazil:14 | Finland:K-16 | Portugal:M/12 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | UK:PG (video rating) (1986) | UK:A (original rating) | West Germany:12 | Netherlands:16

Filming Locations:

4 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill, London, England, UK

Company:

Compagnia Cinematografica Champion

Trivia:

After initially refusing the role, Maria Schneider did not sign until the film was several weeks into production.

Quotes:

David Locke: My name is Robertson. I've been waiting for someone who hasn't arrived.
Man With Cane: Ninos. I've seen so many of them grow up. Other people look at the children and they all imagine a new world. But me, when I watch them, I just see the same old tragedy begin all over again.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Apocalypse Now (1979)

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."