The Passenger (1975 film)
The Passenger () is a 1975 drama neo-noir art film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Written by Antonioni, Mark Peploe, and Peter Wollen, the film is about an Anglo-American journalist, David Locke (Jack Nicholson), who assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the current civil war. Co-starring Maria Schneider, "The Passenger" was the final film in Antonioni's three-picture deal with producer Carlo Ponti and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after "Blowup" and "Zabriskie Point , and competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Plot. David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is a television journalist making a documentary film about post-colonial Africa. In order to finish the film, he is in the Sahara in northern Chad seeking to meet with and interview rebel fighters who are involved in the Chadian Civil War. Struggling to find rebels to interview, he is further frustrated when his Land Rover gets stuck on a sand dune. After a long walk through the desert back to his hotel, a thoroughly dispirited Locke discovers that an Englishman (Robertson), who has 	The Passenger (1975 film)
13368566	also been staying in the same hotel, and with whom he had struck up a casual friendship, has died overnight in his room from a heart condition. Locke decides to switch identities with Robertson. 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 a man named Stephen (Steven Berkhoff). Rachel feels guilt-ridden and torn when she is informed of her husband's death, which we see 	The Passenger (1975 film)
13368567	reported in a newspaper obituary. She approaches Locke's friend, Martin (Ian Hendry), a television producer, in an attempt to get in touch with Robertson to try and learn more about her husband's last days. Meanwhile, Locke, posing as Robertson, has flown to Munich with the dead man's belongings, including his appointment book, which directs him to a locker in the airport. It contains a document wallet with a price-list and several photocopied pages illustrating armaments. After leaving the airport, and apparently acting on a whim, Locke follows a white horse and carriage to a wedding in 	The Passenger (1975 film)
13368568	a baroque chapel, where he waits at the back of the congregation. Once the wedding has finished and the guests have gone, two men who were observing Locke at the airport enter and ask why he did not contact them at the airport. They ask for the documents." 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 in Barcelona. It becomes apparent that Robertson was gun-running for the same rebels whom Locke had been trying to contact in the Sahara. Prompted  by Robertson's diary entries, Locke flies to Barcelona. There he spots his colleague and friend the TV producer Martin, who tries to track Robertson down on behalf of Rachel. Locke encounters an architecture student (Maria Schneider), credited only as The Girl, while trying to hide in a Gaudi building, La Pedrera. He asks her to fetch his belongings from the hotel so that he won't be seen there by Martin, who is casing the lobby. Martin overhears that she is collecting the baggage, and he confronts her outside, requesting that she take him to meet Robertson. She suggests  that he follow her in a taxi, but by luck she manages to lose him. She and Locke leave Barcelona and become lovers on the run. Flush with cash from the down payment on the arms he cannot deliver, Locke is nevertheless drawn to keep a meeting scheduled in Robertson's diary. His appointed contact, however, does not show up. Meanwhile, the men arranging the arms deal are abducted, interrogated and beaten by hitmen operating for the Chadian government. Rachel receives Locke's belongings, returned from Africa. Having heard from Martin of his unsuccessful chase of the elusive Robertson , Rachel is shocked as she opens Locke's passport to Robertson's photo pasted inside. She heads to Spain to find Locke. The hitmen trail her. Rachel co-opts the Spanish police in her pursuit, but Locke and The Girl continue to flee. Locke eventually sends her away, instructing her to meet him later in Tangiers. She departs by bus for Almería. Reaching the Hotel de la Gloria in the Spanish town of Osuna, Locke finds out 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. The Chadian agents arrive at the hotel, enter, and depart just before the police arrive with Rachel Locke. The Girl joins them, and the group enter Locke's room, where they discover that he is dead. When asked by the police whether they recognized him, Rachel says that she never knew him, and the Girl says, "Yes." Production. In a long take early in the film, Locke (Nicholson) is exchanging passport photos in his hotel room, with a tape recording playing an earlier conversation between Locke and Robertson, now dead . The camera pans, 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 film's penultimate shot is a seven-minute long take tracking shot which begins in Locke's hotel room, looking out onto a dusty, run-down 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. Although this is often referred to  as the "final shot" of the film, there is one more. 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. Some years after the production ended, Nicholson had a dispute with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on an unrelated matter. The former had a deal with MGM in producing a film together, but when that project was not pursued, Nicholson demanded compensation; the result being the acquisition of this film. This explains why, out of the three arranged productions between Carlo Ponti  and Michelangelo Antonioni for MGM beginning with "Blowup" (1966) and followed up by "Zabriskie Point" (1970); this was the only one not passed on to Warner Bros., successor-of-interest to the pre-1986 MGM catalogue via their acquisition of Turner Entertainment, who was the initial purchaser of that catalogue. For years Nicholson kept "The Passenger" out of circulation until Sony Pictures Classics courted him with an offer to restore the film. Two books prominently placed on set in the movie are 'The Soul of the Ape', a pioneering work of ethology by Eugene Marais and 'De Lumumba aux colonels' (1966 ) by Anicet Kashamura & Patrice Lumumba. Reception. "The Passenger" has been widely praised for its camerawork (by Luciano Tovoli) and its acting. It competed for the Palme d'Or award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. The film was praised by such critics as Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" and Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times." Roger Ebert gave the film a negative review in 1975, but revisiting it in 2005, he was much more positive, writing that it was a perceptive look at identity, alienation and the human desire to escape oneself. It was placed 110th in the 2012 "Sight  & Sound" critics' poll, and was selected by "Empire" magazine as one of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". John Simon held a differing opinion of The Passenger. He wrote- "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".