Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975, It/Fr/Sp, 124 mins
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre
Review by Mike Bartlett
Seeing as The Passenger marked a return to form for Antonioni in the mid-1970s and was one of the key films of that decade, it seems remarkable that it’s been away so long. But for the last 19 years or so, it’s been extremely difficult – often impossible – to see. This has something to do with lead actor Jack Nicholson purchasing the rights to the movie and then, for strange, never-fully-explained reasons of his own, forbidding any theatrical showing unless he or Antonioni themselves were present. However, in 2003, Nicholson finally sold the rights on to Sony and here is the long-awaited re-release.
But hold on, it’s not that easy. The original cut of the movie lasted some four hours but Antonioni managed to cut it down to two-and-a-half to appease his American producers, MGM. But for them, only an edit under two hours would be acceptable – a 118-minute version was arrived at, much to the director’s chagrin. This cut was five minutes shorter than the European version, distributed under the title Professione:Reporter, that featured two extra crucial scenes in London. When Sony released their new print in America, eagle-eyed film writers noticed they were distributing the shortest version and complained, forcing the company to strike a new print of the European version. And that’s the one we’ve got now – thank God for critics, eh?
All that information may seem superfluous to some, but it makes for a peculiarly apt history for a film that is itself a jigsaw puzzle of fragments and clues. Like L’Avventura (1959) and Blow-Up (1965) before it, The Passenger centres itself around an enigma but one that is never resolved; the film moves forward not to tie up loose ends in the plot but to expound on the existentialist questions raised by its hero’s actions. Nicholson plays a reporter who is sick of being the ‘same’ wherever he goes, so he trades in his identity for that of a dead man in a hotel room. The remainder of the film becomes a quest to discover the truth behind his new name, but Antonioni is less interested in the answers than in Nicholson’s inability to adapt, to become ‘new’.
Much of the film is taken up with the reporter’s odyssey across Europe – through such exotic locales as London, Barcelona and southern Spain – and one might be forgiven for thinking it a glorified travelogue. But the beauty of these places is a necessary counterpoint to Nicholson’s ennui. At one point, he asks Maria Schneider: “What do you see?” And seeing is the key to all Antonioni’s work. For what we see is stunning architecture, gorgeous scenery; but what Nicholson sees, as he intimates in his tale of a blind man suddenly restored to sight after many years, is only ugliness. The sights change, but the eyes that see them remain the same.
Throughout Antonioni’s patient, fastidiously-choreographed long takes, the shot seems to be sliding away from the protagonist, discovering new vistas or hitherto unseen characters, some re-enacting past events as if in flashback. This technique reaches its apotheosis in the famous penultimate shot, where Nicholson meets his doom as the camera wades out into the afternoon sunshine of a Spanish street. The images are concrete and tactile but the sensation is one of fluidity, of ephemeral lives and moments. It’s almost as if the ‘passenger’ of the title is Nicholson’s character himself, hitching a ride on another man’s identity but not gaining control of the journey, the physical surface of the film reflecting his failure to do so.
Since I first discovered Antonioni through Blow-Up, his films have always had the same effect. It’s as if somebody’s given me a new pair of glasses and I’m seeing cinema – and the world – anew. His approach can be boring, sometimes downright opaque. But days after, you can’t forget the experience. If you’re new to his movies, The Passenger is a great place to start. But if you’re a veteran, you’ll find it holds its own among his finest work.
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Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of The Passenger for 3rd July 2006 priced at £12.99.
Features include:
- 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
- English, French and German Mono
- Subtitles: Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Commentary by Jack Nicholson
- Commentary with Aurora Irvine and screenwriter Mark Peploe
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