Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8187 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-07-03
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Dutch, Finnish, Romanian, Danish, German, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, Hindi, Czech, Norwegian, French, Portuguese, Hungarian, English, Bulgarian, Swedish, Arabic, Turkish, Polish
• Dubbed in: French, German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com
The Passenger is one of those movies that is all about the vision of the director, in this case, screen legend Michelangelo Antonioni. Starring none other than Jack Nicholson, and featuring a plot billed as an international romantic thriller, The Passenger defies expectations by turning the genre on its head, making the characters and the story secondary to theme and tone. London-based Journalist David Locke (Nicholson) is working in North Africa when a fellow traveler by the name of David Robertson, who looks remarkably like him, happens to die suddenly. Burned out and depleted, Locke decides to assume the dead man’s identity, drops everything, and starts again as a new man with a new life. With no idea of who Robertson was or what he did for a living, Locke uses Robertson’s datebook as a guide as he travels through Europe and Africa, takes meetings with people he finds out are gun runners, and ends up falling for a beautiful young woman (Maria Schneider). As Robertson, David Locke thinks he has found an exhilirating new freedom, but the fact is he's in over his head: there are people looking for him and his life could be in danger. The movie is a thriller in structure only. While designed for suspense, it’s just a premise for Antonioni to explore on themes of identity, humankind’s seemingly futile relationship to the world around us, and isolation. For Antonioni, the action is the means by which the image unfolds, and not the other way around. The actors and the plot are set pieces, simply smaller means to a larger end, and the image and atmosphere supersede all else. A slow pace, long, lingering shots, a focus on emptiness, and a detached, almost brutally objective point of view are the trademarks on full display here. Especially notable is the stunning seven-minute long shot in the final scene, one of the most famous in cinema history, which Nicholson, in his commentary, tags as an "Antonioni joke." It caps a crowning achievement by one of the big screen’s most visionary directors.

Synopsis
For decades, Michelangelo Antonio's existential drama has been nearly impossible to track down, but thanks to Sony Pictures Classics, THE PASSENGER finally gets the exposure that it deserves. In an impressively low-key performance, Jack Nicholson plays David Locke, a reporter who is researching a story in the North African desert. But when he discovers the dead body of a mysterious man he had just recently befriended, a strange compulsion overtakes him. Passing off the dead man as himself, Locke assumes the identity of Martin Knight and travels to Barcelona on a dangerous mission. Once there, he finds himself falling for a beautiful girl (Maria Schneider) as he drifts further and further away from the man he once was. It isn't long before he realises just how much danger he is in, but by that point, it might be too late to turn back. Antonio's gorgeous, haunting film incorporates elements of a traditional Hollywood thriller, only to leave them behind in search of something deeper. The result is an unsettling and daring work that casts a truly hypnotic spell. Nicholson's surprisingly downplayed performance is perfect for the role, as is Schneider's timid, beautiful presence. Featuring one of the most unforgettable closing shots in movie history, THE PASSENGER is a must-see for anyone with a serious interest in film history.

Customer Reviews

You need a big screen!
I saw this in the cinema. I had no idea what to expect. It was fabulous. I loved every minute, and when I came out I felt I had been through a complete experience - i felt I had been in the cinema for days.
That's why I can understand people who are disappointed and frustrated by it. It's made for cinema, not TV, and DVD just ain't the same. I can give it only four stars - unless you've got a private Odeon in your mansion, in which case it's five.
Antonioni's films are slow, but he was the last great European filmmaker who understood the medium. In these days of push-button editing the chance for viewers to immerse themselves in long, single shots are gone, and with them the nature of the art.

How films are made
Apart from the superb film itself there are two 'commentaries' on this disc, one a run-through of the film with Jack Nicholson talking about his view of it as a masterpiece, describing some of his experiences while making the film, with some asides about Antonioni for whom he obviously has great admiration and affection. Similarly there is another run-through with the script-writer, Mark Peploe (who also wrote the original story). Though rather hesitant and understated, this is also worth-while.
For the student of film or for those of us who just love film as an art, this is an absolutely essential DVD. If the film at first seems slow and confused, stay with it, watch it again, play Nicholson's commentary. The experience will relive itself in your mind's eye with more and more understanding and pleasure.

A Truly Flawed Masterpiece
'The Passenger'is the very essence of quiet, profound filmaking. Elliptical, incrediby ambiguous and with a noirish storyline that discards the importance of plot for the existential philosophies that such a story can open up to. Often I have wondered why such a film has been so badly neglected and forgotten (it wasn't avaliable in the UK on either VHS or DVD formats).

The story is refreshingly simple, leaving Antonioni to practically do whatever he wants with it artistically without once being restricted. Nicholson plays David Locke, a successful journalist following the story of a group of rebels in a remote North African area. Through the opening sequences we are presented with a sense of disorientation, dissatisfaction and confusion in the character (not once through conversation or voiceover but through his actions, his facial expressions, mannerisms and the importance of the vast landscapes caught through each camera shot). In the hotel room next to his he finds a man with a vague resemblance to himself dead. He assumes the man's identity and through information in the man's diary decides to pretend to be him, only later discovering the man is a gun runner dealing with some ruthless criminals. On the run from the British Embassy and the gun runners Nicholson finds himself in Spain where he meets Maria Schneider's character, an anonymous tourist who he decides can help him hide from his pursuers.

The story is fantastic, with definite space for existential musings, philosophy and a number of themes relating to identity, disatisfaction and destiny. However, it is how Antonioni is attempting to impart these messages where the film ultimately fails. The first of the two fatal flaws of 'The Passenger' is that it is trying to be too intelligent. The inclusion of London settings with Locke's wife and a whole host of posh nit-wits making a documentary on his life add nothing whatsoever to the plot and really only result in too many tedious and annoying scenes that completely ruin the mood of the film and the attachment we should be making to the protagonist. Flashbacks of Nicholson interviewing Witch doctors and rebel leaders while his wife is mincing around in the background obviously impart the estrangement between them but alienate the viewer from the story and the essence of alienation the film is ultimately attempting to impart.

Many believe Antonioni is discarding the need for plot in this film, but ultimately I believe that the mechanics of the plot he has annoyingly added have ruined what the film may have been: An absolute masterpiece. The British perspective in the film has ruined it and taken away the existential tone and the edge that extended concentration on Nicholson's character may have brought to the film.

The second flaw in the film is Nicholson's performance, but this is not actually his fault. The nitty-gritty flashbacks, the completely pretentious inclusion of footage of innocent civilians being shot etc. and the occasionally completely tedious camerawork do not give him space to establish his character. As a true devotee of Nicholson's earlier film 'Five Easy Pieces' (his finest performance in a true existentialist masterpiece), i noticed that he just didn't bring the same dimension to David Locke as he did to Robert Dupea- and yet both men are running away from something. 'Five Easy Pieces' had brooding long camera shots, scenes with little or no dialogue, and very little plot significance, but it completely draws you in and makes you feel the character's pain and tribulation. 'The Passenger' does not do this. Too many scenes slip by without any edge or emapthy, too many scenes have Maria Schneider speaking artsy drivel that is uninspired. Nicholson could really have made the film his own, but the fact is Antonioni has not granted him the privilege of simply acting. There are a few bursts of brilliant, underplayed performance towards the beginning of the film and the end (the Yugoslavian Chapel scene must also be applauded), but otherwise he wanders around stifled and asleep.

Finally, 'The Passeneger', although flawed, contains moments of incredible beauty, of technically superb direction, and it leaves you asking a huge number of questions once it has finished. The film's end left me breathless, disorientated and ever so slightly melancholy. The seven minute zoom shot with Nicholson on the bed and all of the myths that surround it (it is so completely ambiguous in plot and in message, left entirely to the viewer to decide what has happened)leave you completely in awe. Few films have ever left it to the sub-conscience and the subliminal to lead you towards the conclusion. Intelligent, ethereal, poignant and impossible. Classic.