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Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre, Ian Hendry, Steven Berkoff ... see more see more... , Ambrose Bia , José María Caffarel , Ángel del Pozo , Chuck Mulvehill , Manfred Spies , Jean-Baptiste Tiemele , James Campbell

The mutual admiration between actor Jack Nicholson and director Michelangelo Antonioni resulted in the psychological drama The Passenger. Nicholson plays David Locke, a disillusioned American reporter... read more read more... who is sent on a grueling mission to North Africa. When he stumbles across the body of a dead man, Locke, long desirous of starting life over again, assumes the corpse's identity. He soon discovers that the man he's pretending to be is involved in gun running on behalf of a terrorist group. Making the acquaintance of a mysterious woman (Maria Schneider), he finds a kindred spirit -- a woman as "lost" as he. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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PG-13, 2 hr. 6 min.

Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni

Release Date: February 28, 1975

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DVD Release Date: April 25, 2006

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'Professione: reporter' - German poster Maria Schneider and Jack Nicholson on the set of 'Professione: reporter' (1975) on the set of 'Professione: reporter' (1975) Nicholson and Schneider in 'Professione: reporter' Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider Jack Nicholson and Charles Mulvehill Nicholson as reporter David Locke Nicholson and Schneider in 'Professione: reporter' 'Professione: reporter' - French poster Nicholson as reporter David Locke Nicholson as reporter David Locke Nicholson as reporter David Locke Nicholson as reporter David Locke Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider Nicholson as reporter David Locke Professione: reporter (The Passenger)
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Flixster Reviews (571)

  • fb1038944442
    November 2, 2011
    fb1038944442
    The Passenger is a superbly executed piece of nihilism, featuring a pre-Bucket List pre-wacky Jack Nicholson. His uninhibited, organic and quietly angry performance reminds us why he was the poster child of the 70's anti-hero movement that changed movies forever, before they ch... read moreanged back. He is able to make his highly implausible character switch with the dead gun runner completely relatable. His co-star Maria Schneider's spontaneity and honesty still rings resoundingly true more than thirty years later.

    This film has all the trappings of a mystery thriller on paper, but if you are not familiar with the Antonioni output, and require resolution and closure in your films, this film will disappoint and let you down at every turn. Instead, let it wash over you and start to get comfortable with ambiguity and randomness, as we all need to do in our lives. Ambiguity and randomness are Antonioni's big theme, running through all his films.

    The Passenger's selling points are the rich Spanish and African locations, shot in an objective and unromantic style, and the true and honest acting of its two leads. It's very long, but that's part of its beauty. The supporting plot points, including that of the quest of Nicholson's boss and wife to find him, do not add much to the film, especially when you realize how irrelevant they are to the final impact of the film. They seem to be Antonioni's device to suck us into getting caught up in a chase film, only to have our finely honed film going expectations utterly shattered on those craggy Spanish rocks.

    The long seven minute single shot that nearly ends the film (there's a quick shot afterwards) is quietly tragic and will haunt most viewers for all of their film going days. I re-screened the film after 20 years and it has never left me.
  • cosmo313
    April 16, 2011
    cosmo313
    This is basically the type of film that only film professors like, it seems. It's not bad, but definitely not for everyone. Maybe I could have gotten into it more had it been a little less slow. I mena, it is a 70s nicholson film, so it definitely has that going for it.

    The con... read morecept is intriguing, but it would have been better with a little more developed plot. I liked the camera work, but the graininess of the film stock kind of bugged me. Like others, I'm floored by the second to last shot: a 7 minute long take/tracking shot that, even though I read how they pulled it off, still blows my mind.

    See it if you're curious, but I wouldn't really force this upon anyone. It had some good ideas, but just couldn't have been done in a less pretentious and more accessible manner.
  • mumby1988
    February 5, 2011
    mumby1988
    There is an argument put forward by film theorists that today's audiences are incapable of appreciating older films. The saturation of our culture with music videos and the internet creates a natural impatience, which carries over into cinema through increasingly rapid editing an... read mored flashier cinematography. This causes the simplification of imagery and the symbols which lie behind them, and the whole process begins feeding on itself until we are all infantilised.

    Notwithstanding its inherent arrogance towards the cinema-going public, this theory is flawed because it is based upon a nostalgic assumption about older films. Contrary to its assumptions, potentially great films are often reduced to being merely good or very good, not by shortcomings in their audience but in the difficult attitude they take towards presenting their ideas. The Passenger is a typical example, being a revered classic which is indeed very good, but whose flaws are easy to acknowledge and prevent it from ever being great.

    The Passenger is Michelangelo Antonioni's third and final feature in the English language, the others being Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point. Like many of his films, it explores the issue of alienation, specifically of characters feeling isolated and out of place in the world around them. But where Zabriskie Point attempts this analysis with an entire generation, embodied by the two students who make love in the desert, The Passenger is a lot more focussed, more personal and ultimately more successful.

    The film explores the extent to which a single act or idea can alter an individual's life, using the trading of identities as a means to explore existential disillusionment. When we first meet David Locke, expertly played by Jack Nicholson, he is bored of his life, bored of his work and desperate to escape to somewhere where no-one can find him. He trades identities with the dead man in the next room believing that he can start his life over, without any baggage or responsibilities: for once he can live the way he wants, for as long as he wants.

    Having taken on this mantle, and changed from Locke to Robertson, our leading man quickly finds himself in dangerous circumstances worthy of any thriller. The scene in the church, in which Nicholson bluffs his way through a meeting with the men he is supplying with arms, is reminiscent of Richard Hannay during the political meeting in The 39 Steps. Both characters have to think on their feet to convince the world that they are someone else, making all decisions and giving all answers based purely on impulse and guesswork.

    But unlike John Buchan's novel, or any of the film versions that followed, the thrills in The Passenger are much more internalised. There is a thriller-like plot, both in Locke's new identity as a gun runner and in the efforts of his director and wife to track him down. But these elements have to take equal billing to the existential thrust of the film, which is interested in identity and the internalised conflicts of the central character. The film manages to balance the two very well, giving us enough moments of jeopardy and near-misses to keep the less patient among us interested.

    The central idea of The Passenger is that all men (and possibly women) are bound by the same doubts, fears and anxieties. Assuming a new identity is not a feasible means to escape from oneself, no matter how methodically one goes about it. On the one hand, 'Robertson' finds himself bound to supply guns which he cannot possibly deliver; the second he takes the down-payment in the church, he becomes a wanted man. On the other hand, elements of Locke in his previous life begin to encroach, as his initial enthusiasm begins to give way to melancholy, cynicism, and finally an all-encompassing sense of futility.

    The key scene in The Passenger comes in the last ten minutes, where Locke and The Girl are in hiding in a hotel, knowing full well that the former will soon be killed. Locke relates a story of a blind man who regains his sight: the man was initially elated, but this vision exposed him to the horrors of the world which he could previously only imagine, and he ended up a recluse who committed suicide. This is the nub of the film: what seems like a chance to escape the world and see it with new eyes only leads to greater suffering. Ultimately all we can do is accept our status as passengers, unable to influence the mechanics of this world and fully mindful that whatever we do, death will always catch up with us.

    This outlook is furthered by Antonioni's direction, which highlights how small and helpless the characters are. Whether they are crawling through the desert or in the busy streets of an inner city, the central characters are presented from a distance, insignificant in the face of all around them. Even in its most romantic moment, when it appears that Locke and the girl have made love, the camera keeps its distance, peering through the doorway when other directors would have taken us up close and personal. The film is beautifully shot with washed-out colours and a series of interesting camera angle.

    The most famous of these is the penultimate scene, a seven-minute tracking shot which is both a technical showcase (predating the Steadicam) and a poetic means to bring the story to a close. As Locke lights up a cigarette and lies down on the bed, the camera moves slowly forward through the bars of the window, out into the square, follows the movements of several characters before turning around and drifting back in to find Locke dead. This is Locke's soul taking flight, finally escaping from this world into something new, and taking one last look at what he is leaving behind.

    For all its virtues, The Passenger is not without its faults. Even to those familiar with Antonioni's style, or more general trends in European filmmaking, the film is very, very slow and around half an hour too long. Because the emphasis is so much on emotion rather than plot, its story could have been handled in 90 minutes without losing any impact, whether visually or emotionally. Antonioni's languorous shooting style with long slow takes and almost no soundtrack can seem pretentious on occasion, albeit not so much that we lose all interest in what is happening.

    The other problem with The Passenger is the sense of distance involved. Just as, in the words of David Lynch, the artist needn't suffer to show suffering, so the audience shouldn't necessary be alienated during a film about alienation. Like the work of Tom Kalin, The Passenger keeps its audience at arms' length, not out of coyness about its subject matter, but because that seems the natural way to tell the story. And as with Swoon or Savage Grace, this decision may be the right one, but it makes connecting with the characters more difficult, putting the entire story in jeopardy.

    The Passenger is an intriguing and haunting work whose influence on modern cinema continues, as seen by its substantial presence in Anton Corbijn's The American. Jack Nicholson is on good form, albeit not quite as good as in Chinatown, and the film is recommended viewing for anyone interested in European cinema. For all its faults and bits that drag, there is a slow-burning profundity to it, which keeps it an enticing and memorable experience for generations to come.
  • ajv2688
    January 3, 2011
    ajv2688
    A brilliant drama/adventure movie from Antonioni, and starring Nicholson. I loved it, and I highly recommend it.
  • 5oclockcoffee
    December 2, 2010
    5oclockcoffee
    Bertolucci definitely knows how to capture beauty, but Antonioni did much better with Maria Schneider (athough, I know, there are three years of difference between "Last tango in Paris" and "Professione: reporter").
    It's good, it has very good moments/shots, but there's somethi... read moreng missing for me. Was I maybe expecting too much? Maybe.


  • imrealgod
    August 25, 2010
    imrealgod
    While I liked the story, I didn't (partly) like the way it's told. It was too slow-paced (that's my only issue with this movie, I guess, but a major one; I'd have enjoyed this movie much more had it not been for that) for my taste, especially the first half & the very ending. Som... read moree may find it essential & mind-blowing, but this kind of execution simply isn't my cup of tea. But I'm glad that I didn't give it up even though it tried my patience, at times. Liked it for its unique storyline, excellent performances & some great dialogues (certain conversations between Jack Nicholson & Maria Schneider's characters).
  • JonathanHutchings
    March 30, 2010
    JonathanHutchings
    Alienation is a common theme in many of Michaelangelo Antonioni's movies, but The Passenger is truly one of his best films. Starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, the film is on one hand a captivating thriller about a journalist who adopts a dead man's life only to get more... read more than he bargains for, and the other a meditation on Antonioni's career-long obsession with isolation and humanity. Together, the form and the substance work together improbably well -- particularly given the director's reluctance to embrace anything so simple as a straight-forward narrative; both as a real and compelling story and art-house rumination, The Passenger sweeps you along on its leisurely journey and holds up as well today as it did when first released in 1975. Not to be confused with other so-called "art house films," (eccentric works designed only for grad students and snobs) this film truly celebrates (and critiques) the journey of life, not the destination. Every shot, every sequence can be pondered for hours after the film ends. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the film's final, brilliant penultimate shot (and for my money, one of the greatest shots ever committed to celluloid), a seven-minute-plus tour de force in which Antonioni's gradually creeping camera -- perhaps embodying the point of view of Locke's departing spirit, or maybe just functioning as the director's instrument for breaking free from the constraints of traditional cinematic grammar (and technical logistics) -- impossibly passes through an iron-barred window, onto the street where Locke's pursuers have gathered, and then turns back around to present the discovery of Locke's lifeless body lying on a dilapidated hotel room bed. Fusing the physical with the metaphysical in this legendary sequence, Antonioni finally shows us what's on "the other side of the window," and in the process crafts an enigmatic coda for the ages. A definite must-see.
  • binky013
    January 19, 2009
    binky013
    Antonioni is nothing if not idiosyncratic, and Jack Nicholson is the perfect actor to fall into a role in one of Antonioni's movies. A meeting of two highly idiosyncratic minds.

    Be careful what you wish for. The existential quality of this 1975 movie feels like a throwback

    ... read more to the post-nuclear cold war paranoia of films from the 1950s and 60s. You may be able to delude yourself into believing that you can escape everything, but in the end you, and no one else either, can escape death.
  • harrycaul
    April 27, 2008
    harrycaul
    Up until its enigmatic conclusion, the narrative of "The Passenger" progresses surprisingly straightforwardly, albeit at a snail's pace and with artsy digressions. After finding a 'businessman' acquaintance named Robertson dead in his hotel room, David Locke (Jack Nicholson), a j... read moreaded journalist, fakes his own death, assumes the other's identity and hops around Europe keeping the dead man's appointments. When the nature of Robertson's business turns out to be gunrunning, Locke finds himself pursued by agents of an African despot, to whose enemies the real Robertson was supplying arms, as well as by his own abandoned 'widow', seeking answers about her husband's 'death'.

    There's an early shot I especially like that contrasts fascinatingly with Omar Sharif's memorable first appearance in "Lawrence of Arabia". As a Bedouin riding a camel tantalizingly approaches Locke's stationary Land Rover, Antonioni's camera deliberately pans away to Nicholson, drinking water from a canteen at the vehicle's rear. "The Passenger" and "Lawrence of Arabia" are both visually stunning movies, the obvious difference being that Antonioni eschews a spectacular visual style in favour of naturalism and the beauty of the mundane. There are also a couple of wonderful, seamless transitions into and out of flashback, within the space of a single camera movement. Though undeniably impressive, the film's climactic long take, the penultimate shot of the movie, is a little too self-consciously orchestrated to be wholly delightful. Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider are good but Jenny Runacre is lousy as Nicholson's wife.
  • fb1142797643
    January 21, 2012
    fb1142797643
    Burned-out international journalist David Locke (Jack Nicholson, in the same year he won an Oscar for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") switches places with dead man David Robertson, who turns out to be an outlaw gun-runner. Locke's wife (Jenny Runacre) and producer (Ian Hendry)... read more pursue Robertson for answers about Locke's death, not realizing they're looking for Locke himself, while Locke picks up Maria Schneider as a traveling companion. (How did this vacant, mumbling actress land choice roles opposite both Nicholson and Marlon Brando?) Meanwhile, Locke invites danger by taking money for Robertson's pending arms deal.

    This is easily enough story to satisfy a director like Michelangelo Antonioni. Locke's life on the run allows Antonioni to shoot a breathtaking collection of arid landscapes and picturesque, white-stucco settlements and, sorry to say, the locations soon become more interesting than the plot. Of course, Antonioni's ace in the hole is the famous, enigmatic long take that climaxes the film. It's still a miracle.

View All Professione: reporter (The Passenger) Reviews

Critic Reviews

Carina Chocano
August 12, 2006
Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times

What in different hands would have been a bombastic psychological thriller becomes a stark study of existential alienation. Full Review

Peter Howell
January 13, 2006
Peter Howell, Toronto Star

The Passenger is a marvel of quiet insight in many ways, not least of which is the chance to view Jack Nicholson before he became JACK NICHOLSON. Full Review

Chris Vognar
December 1, 2005
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

A creator of lonely worlds, Mr. Antonioni painted one of his most vivid portraits of isolation with The Passenger. Full Review

Colin Covert
November 30, 2005
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

In The Passenger, Jack Nicholson gives one of his finest performances as television journalist David Locke. Full Review

G. Allen Johnson
November 11, 2005
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger is more than the re-release of a great film -- it's a rare chance to see a major cinematic work, perhaps more than once, on the big screen. Full Review

Ty Burr
November 11, 2005
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

One of the deepest, most rigorous, and most rewarding films of its era. Full Review

Michael Wilmington
November 10, 2005
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

It's a movie from the past that still points ahead to the future: a cinematic rite of passage that raptly recalls a time when the world may have been as uncertain as now, but the movies were often lov... Full Review

Peter Rainer
November 3, 2005
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

The film's final seven-minute shot is one of the great denouements in film history. Full Review

Peter Travers
November 3, 2005
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Antonioni's 1975 landmark.

Owen Gleiberman
November 2, 2005
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

The Passenger isn't finally the masterpiece some have made it out to be, but it retains a singular intrigue: It's the first, and probably the last, thriller ever made about depression. Full Review

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