The Passenger [Blu-ray]

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni

Overview

In this psychological drama, disillusioned American reporter David Locke is sent on a grueling mission to North Africa. When he stumbles across the body of a dead man, Locke assumes the corpse's identity. He discovers that the man was involved in espionage activities on behalf of a terrorist group.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/22/2020
UPC:	0043396570795
Original Release:	1975
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	ALLIED VAUGHN
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	2:06:00
Sales rank:	29,870

Special Features

Audio Commentary with Journalist Aurora Irvine and Screenwriter Mark Peploe; Audio Commentary with Jack Nicholson; Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jack Nicholson	David Locke
Maria Schneider	Girl
Jenny Runacre	Rachel Locke
Ian Hendry	Martin Knight
Steven Berkoff	Stephen
Ambroise Bia	Achebe
James Campbell	Witch Doctor
Manfred Spies	German Stranger
Jean Baptiste Tiemele	Murderer
Angel Del Pozo	Police Inspector
Chuck Mulvehill	Robertson,Actor
José María Caffarel	Hotel Keeper
Ivan Vandor	Composer

Technical Credits

Michelangelo Antonioni

Mark Peploe

Peter Wollen

Michelangelo Antonioni	Director,Screenwriter
Carlo Ponti	Producer
Mark Peploe	Screenwriter
Peter Wollen	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

The Passenger is a late Antonioni film, made only about a decade after his most influential works had been completed. After the success of Blow-Up (1966), Antonioni was free to write his own ticket, but the result was the disastrous Zabriskie Point (1970), which despite some interesting sequences (particularly the last reel, depicting a sprawling ranch house in the desert exploding repeatedly in slow motion, to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's "Be Careful with That Ax, Eugene") was a commercial and critical failure that made financing difficult to come by for the director's next project. Combining forces with Jack Nicholson as his lead actor, Antonioni made The Passenger as his first resolutely commercial project, and the results are decidedly mixed. Never comfortable working in English (the best sequences of Blow-Up are conspicuously wordless), Antonioni's tale of jaded television reporter David Locke (Nicholson), who swaps identities with a dead man he comes across in a hotel in Africa while on assignment, plays out like a rather listless remake of one of the director's 1960s classics, in which Alain Delon or Marcello Mastroianni took on the role of one of Antonioni's typically disaffected, seemingly doomed protagonists. The last shot of the film is an extraordinary technical tour de force, but it can't disguise the essential emptiness of the project, which leans much too heavily on Nicholson's screen presence to get its message across. One is never convinced that Nicholson's character is as bored with life as Antonioni would like us to believe; Nicholson's screen persona is simply too resourceful to allow himself to spiritually disintegrate. Revered by many as one of Antonioni's last great films, The Passenger finally seems like a shadow of his past work in film, lacking the necessary commitment to the material that made his earlier works so austere and stunningly original.