By 1975, Jack Nicholson was an established actor, having played a man disheartened with his path in life (Five Easy Pieces),a misogynist (Carnal Knowledge),and a detective (Chinatown). While his best known role from 1975 was that of the rebellious McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", an equally important one was that of a journalist who switches identities with a dead gun-runner in "Professione: reporter" ("The Passenger" in English).

Michelangelo Antonioni had previously made a trilogy of movies looking at disillusionment with modernity (L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse). But this focus on the topic emphasizes the protagonist's individual desire for something new. The first half of the movie has limited dialogue, often featuring a sentence or two before going several minutes without any speech, as if to emphasize the isolation that the protagonist feels in his current career. Things start to pick up once he meets a young woman (Maria Schneider) and soon realizes that by assuming a new identity, he's gotten in over his head. Much like how the protagonist of Antonioni's "Blow Up" faced a moral dilemma about his work, Nicholson's character has to face the issue of whether it was truly in his interest to adopt the gun-runner's identity.

While this movie isn't a masterpiece in the vein of Nicholson's more famous movie that year, it still bears watching as a look at the question of one's role in the world, and our connection to events beyond our reach. And the final shot is one of the most impressive in cinema history.

David Locke (an unusually understated Jack Nicholson),a journalist making a reportage in Africa, is tired of his life and perhaps of himself; when a person he had just met dies, David pretends to be him and goes on with the dead man's mysterious life.

This could have been the plot of an airport novel, but, like in l'Avventura, in Antonioni the "giallo" side of the story is merely the premise.

Locke is frustrated by being unable to see beyond the surface of people and situations, and decides to start over again as Robertson; however, much like the blind man of the final anecdote, he ultimately finds no relief. His perspective is limited, his experience haunted by problems of both his old life (his wife pursuing him) and his new one (people hunting for him).

The moment in which he is finally able to transcend his narrow point of view is death. In an astounding piece of film-making, a long, elegant single take, the camera leaves an exhausted David lying in the bed of a sordid hotel in a town in the middle of nowhere, follows the key events taking place outside and symbolically slides through the window grates in the moment of the murder, finally freeing David from his own existence.

Also fascinating is the use Antonioni makes of colors. A sequence at the beginning shows a bright blue car stalling in the midst of the stark orange of the desert. For the rest of the movie blue/white on one hand and orange/red on the other are symbolically linked, respectively, to David's new life/desire to escape and to his past (and Robertson's) catching up with him.

-Blue/white: the rooms of the hotel in which the identities are switched, the dead man's shirt which David wears, the sea of Barcelona over which David appears to loom over in a memorable shot, the Girl's dresses and luggage, the car on which they travel.

-Orange/red: These tones are dominant at the beginning (the desert),almost disappear during the middle act of the picture, then reappear in the last part as David's fate comes in full circle, re-emerging in the landscape in which the car breaks down. When the murder takes place, a young kid wearing a bright red shirt enters the screen running, symbolically sealing David's fate.

9/10

Jack Nicholson plays a reporter who has gone to some godforsaken African nation that is in the midst of a revolution. However, he cannot find this revolution or the revolutionaries and, on a lark, poses as a dead arms merchant to meet these folks. And, like the film "Date Night", taking on another's identity is NOT a good idea. It's not a bad idea for a plot--but it's also I noticed that this film has a very respectable overall score of 7.6. Also, most of the reviews are very positive. However, I just cannot agree with the overall love of "The Passenger"--mostly because of HOW it presents the story instead of the story itself. I know Michalangelo Antonioni is considered a great artistic director, but I just felt the entire film was way, way understated and, as a result, amazingly dull.

As for the story, it's very slow in unfolding and through much of the film you really have no idea what is occurring. I know that this is the artsy style, but I sure would have liked a much more direct approach--and one with energy--something this film severely lacks. But everyone just wanders through the film--almost like emotional zombies. SOME energy would have helped this one a lot. But this, combined with poor sound (almost like the film was being made by non-professionals) made this tedious viewing and something I'd never like to repeat.