The Passenger (film)
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| The Passenger | |
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 The Passenger film poster |
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| Directed by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Written by | Mark Peploe, Michelangelo Antonioni, Peter Wollen |
| Starring | Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Steven Berkoff |
| Music by | Ivan Vandor |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | 1975 |
| Running time | 125 min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Passenger (Professione: reporter) is a film directed and co-written by Michelangelo Antonioni, released in 1975, in which Jack Nicholson stars as a reporter in Africa who assumes the identity of a dead stranger. The film was nominated for the "Palme d'Or" award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.
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[edit] Plot summary
David Locke, a television journalist played by Jack Nicholson, is in an African desert searching for rebels. He keeps failing: his contacts abandon him, his Land Rover gives out. Tired of his work, his marriage and his life, he decides to switch identity with a mysterious Englishman staying at the same hotel, Mr Robertson (Charles Mulvehill), who has died suddenly overnight. To assume Robertson's identity, David must carefully cut the photographs out of their passports, swap them, and reseal them. Since the motel manager has already mistaken him for Robertson, the plan should go off without any hitches.
The ruse works, and Locke's wife Rachel (Jenny Runacre) is eventually informed of his death. Unable to believe it or accept it, she attempts to contact the sole witness, Robertson (i.e. Locke masquerading as the Englishman) to find out about his death. "Robertson" (Locke) has now returned to Europe with the real (i.e. dead) Robertson's agenda.
As Locke works to keep Robertson's appointments across Europe, he learns that Robertson was a major gunrunner for the rebels. Robertson is, of course, unpopular with the governments opposing his rebels, and one of them is sponsoring a team that has orders to assassinate him. Later, with David Locke checked into another hotel, he finds himself followed by British Embassy people trying to track him down on behalf of his wife. It also appears that his business associates don't like being stiffed on the sale of merchandise that never arrived. He feels he is being watched, so he asks an architecture student (Maria Schneider) to retrieve his belongings. She (never named) and Locke later become lovers.
Attempting to flee the authorities, David Locke has some high speed chases, and cross-country chases, and even run-ins with the local police. His girlfriend is invaluable here because his command of Spanish and French is extraordinarily clumsy, and she, to their benefit, speaks like a native.
The thugs eventually catch up with him in a hotel in a Spanish town (Osuna, province of Seville). The assassination is not shown on screen, but implied via a virtuoso seven minute, hypnotic, long take wide-screen zoom beginning in a hotel room, traveling out into a dusty parking area, and tracking back into the hotel room.
[edit] Evaluation
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.
[edit] Analysis
The title of this movie was originally supposed to refer to Nicholson as Maria Schneider's character, The Girl, was supposed to be doing all of the driving in the movie. However, when it came time to film, it was discovered that Schneider could not drive and Nicholson was forced to take over the role, substantially confusing the meaning of the title. However, if one takes the title as it was originally intended, Nicholson's character is a passenger in his own life, an observer and not the driving force. He asks superficial questions and does not appear to grasp the greater significance of the things he sees and observes.
Maria Schneider's character does not have a name in the film, and at the end she is credited as The Girl. There is strong evidence to suggest that she is the real Robertson's wife, Daisy. Evidence includes the fact that she shows up in all of the cities in which the daily calendar planner says that Robertson is supposed to meet Daisy, as well as the fact that when Nicholson checks into the hotel at the end the clerk tells him that Mrs. Robertson has already checked in and that he will not need Nicholson's passport as he already has Mrs. Robertson's - indicating that the name of "Robertson" appears on her passport with a photograph bearing the image of The Girl.
Further evidence is offered by the fact that The Girl appears in London sitting and reading. She appears later in exactly the same position when Locke arrives in Barcelona. There is also evidence to suggest that The Girl knows the black and white "thugs" (as Nicholson describes them in the DVD commentary), as the white thug is seen in the final long shot to approach her and speak to her as if he knows her. She pulls her arm away as if she is upset at what she has done.
After the story of the blind man, Locke says to Maria Schneider, "You'd better go." She agrees and we see her toss some clothing into a case in the bathroom. However, instead of leaving, she sits down, hangs her head, and begins crying. In a film drenched in Christian imagery, she appears to have taken on the role of Locke's Judas and has betrayed him to the black and white thugs.
Though she says she'll go, she stands outside of the hotel waiting for the thugs to arrive. In the background we hear a lonely trumpet, evocative of a bull fight. This image is even more firmly established when we see the young boy in the red shirt throw his hands up in the air and drop his shoulders as if he is getting ready to do battle with the matador.
Just before the final long shot begins, however, we see Locke via an overhead angle lying in bed. His sunglasses are beside him, as though he were the blind man who has finally taken off his protection and exposed himself to the ugly, harsh, and dirty world.
As the camera begins its move toward the caged window, we see Locke's feet pointing upright as he is lying on his back. As the shot progresses, we see Locke's feet flip as he rolls over on to his stomach, literally assuming the exact face down position that he discovered Robertson's body on the bed in Africa. From this moment on, Locke is effectively dead. The film's tentative plotline has come full circle, just as Antonioni's camera will do over the next seven or so minutes.
As the camera proceeds toward the window, Maria Schneider re-enters the frame from screen right to interact with the white thug. As she does so, the camera makes a slight revelatory pan to the right to show the reflection of the black agent in the glass reaching for a gun. Many viewers do not notice this as their attention is focused on The Girl. The Girl's actions during this scene is believed to be further evidence of her complicity in Nicholson's character's murder.
In the DVD commentary to the movie, Nicholson advises the viewer to pay particular attention to what seems to be the sound of an automobile's backfire. This occurs right as the Driver's Education car is driving in circles around the dusty parking lot. This car is, of course, merely a distraction. It is not backfire at all, and Nicholson acknowledges this. In actuality, it is the sound of the gunshot that kills Nicholson's character. A few seconds later we hear the sound of a door opening and closing as the black thug leaves Nicholson's room. At almost the same instance we see the white thug drive up in the white car to pick up his partner.
Locke is discovered at the end of the movie laying on his back with his face turned away from the audience. The police inspector asks Mrs. Locke, "Do you recognize him?" She replies: "I never knew him." In a movie about identity, this should be taken in the metaphorical sense. Although she recognized whose body this was, she was responding to how she did not know him as a person. The inspector then asks Maria Schneider, "Do you recognize him?" She replies, "Yes." She actually knew the man laying dead in front of her.
[edit] The long final shot
There were a number of reasons why the shot proved so difficult to accomplish and is so studied by film students. The shot needed to be taken in the evening towards dusk to minimize the light difference between interior and exterior. Since the shot was continuous, it was not possible to adjust the lens aperture at the moment when the camera passed from the room to the square. As such, the scene could only be shot between 5:00 and 7:30 in the evening.
Difficulties were further compounded by atmospheric conditions. The weather in Spain was windy and dusty. For the shot to work, the atmosphere needed to be still to ensure that the movement of the camera would be smooth. Antonioni tried to encase the camera in a sphere to lessen the impact of the wind, but then it couldn't get through the window.
Then there were further technical problems. The camera ran on a ceiling track in the hotel room, and when it emerged outside the window it was picked up by a hook suspended on a giant crane that was nearly thirty metres high. A system of gyroscopes had to be fitted to the camera to mask the change from a smooth track to the less smooth and more mobile crane. The bars on the outside of the window were fitted on hinges. As the camera came up to the bars they were swung away at the same time as the hook of the crane attached itself to the camera as it left the tracks. The whole operation was co-ordinated by Antonioni from a van by means of monitors and microphones to assistants who, in turn, communicated his instructions to the actors and the operators.
In the DVD commentary, Nicholson states that Antonioni constructed the entire hotel entirely so that the final shot could be accomplished, though he suggests that the entire hotel was built on hinges instead of simply the bars outside the window.
[edit] External links
- The Passenger's Official Site at Sony Pictures
- The Passenger at the Internet Movie Database
- 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
