The Passenger (1975)
“People Disappear, Every Time They Leave the Room”
Unhappy with both his professional and personal life, television reporter David Locke gets a unique opportunity while on assignment in Chad. After attempting to make contact with rebels fighting in the desert, Locke returns to his hotel to discover that David Robertson, the guest in the next room has died of a heart attack. Locke decides to exchange identities. He drags Robertson into his room, switches the pictures in his and Robertson’s passports, and takes off with Robertson’s tickets and appointment book.
In London, on being informed of Locke’s “death,” his wife Rachel persuades producer Martin Knight to set out to discover what happened to the reporter.
Meantime, Locke keeps Robertson’s appointments. In Munich, he discovers that he has exchanged lives with a gunrunner—Robertson was dealing with the rebels that Locke attempted to contact in Chad. Continuing to follow Robertson’s itinerary, Locke flies to Barcelona—where he takes in Gaudi’s neo-Gothic Palacio Güell, and persuades a French girl to help him. Pursued both by the ghost’s of Locke’s past and by representatives of the government opposing the rebels with whom Robertson was dealing, Locke and the girl drive ever deeper into Southern Spain, until they reach Algeciras.
Michelangelo Antonioni directed The Passenger in 1975. The screenplay, by Mark Peploe, film theorist Peter Wollen, and Antonioni, is based on an Eric Ambler-like story by Peploe. It uses flashbacks to overlap the past and present, providing a meditation on the fragmentation of identity, while following the twists and turns endured by a man plunged into an uncertain, dangerous world.
Antonioni’s earlier work includes glittering genre films (Cronaca di un Amore, 1950: and La Signora senza Camelie, 1953), art films (La Notte, 1961, L’Eclisse, 1962; and Deserto Rosso, 1964), and international films (Blow Up, made in England in 1966, and Zabriske Point, made in the USA in 1970). With The Passenger, he fuses elements of all three types of film. The result rivals Antonioni’s two most impressive works—the two transitional films (Le Amiche, 1955; and L’Avventura, 1960) that he completed between the genre and art films.
Antonioni uses elements of the mystery genre, the beautiful location shooting by director of photography Luciano Tovoli—at one point his elegant roving camera produces an extraordinary virtuoso seven and a half minute shot—the sympathetic performance of French actress Maria Schneider as the girl, and the active presence of Jack Nicholson as Locke, to weave together the strands of the story and resolve the issues of identity in The Passenger.
Unhappy with both his professional and personal life, television reporter David Locke gets a unique opportunity while on assignment in Chad. After attempting to make contact with rebels fighting in the desert, Locke returns to his hotel to discover that David Robertson, the guest in the next room has died of a heart attack. Locke decides to exchange identities. He drags Robertson into his room, switches the pictures in his and Robertson’s passports, and takes off with Robertson’s tickets and appointment book.
In London, on being informed of Locke’s “death,” his wife Rachel persuades producer Martin Knight to set out to discover what happened to the reporter.
Meantime, Locke keeps Robertson’s appointments. In Munich, he discovers that he has exchanged lives with a gunrunner—Robertson was dealing with the rebels that Locke attempted to contact in Chad. Continuing to follow Robertson’s itinerary, Locke flies to Barcelona—where he takes in Gaudi’s neo-Gothic Palacio Güell, and persuades a French girl to help him. Pursued both by the ghost’s of Locke’s past and by representatives of the government opposing the rebels with whom Robertson was dealing, Locke and the girl drive ever deeper into Southern Spain, until they reach Algeciras.
Michelangelo Antonioni directed The Passenger in 1975. The screenplay, by Mark Peploe, film theorist Peter Wollen, and Antonioni, is based on an Eric Ambler-like story by Peploe. It uses flashbacks to overlap the past and present, providing a meditation on the fragmentation of identity, while following the twists and turns endured by a man plunged into an uncertain, dangerous world.
Antonioni’s earlier work includes glittering genre films (Cronaca di un Amore, 1950: and La Signora senza Camelie, 1953), art films (La Notte, 1961, L’Eclisse, 1962; and Deserto Rosso, 1964), and international films (Blow Up, made in England in 1966, and Zabriske Point, made in the USA in 1970). With The Passenger, he fuses elements of all three types of film. The result rivals Antonioni’s two most impressive works—the two transitional films (Le Amiche, 1955; and L’Avventura, 1960) that he completed between the genre and art films.
Antonioni uses elements of the mystery genre, the beautiful location shooting by director of photography Luciano Tovoli—at one point his elegant roving camera produces an extraordinary virtuoso seven and a half minute shot—the sympathetic performance of French actress Maria Schneider as the girl, and the active presence of Jack Nicholson as Locke, to weave together the strands of the story and resolve the issues of identity in The Passenger.
posted by John Bloomfield at 7:04 PM
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