By Martyn Conterio.
Last night I sat and watched Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 film The Passenger starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. Not only is the film incredibly directed – Jack Nicholson delivers his most subdued performance…he’s almost blank in the film…as if he’s in a Robert Bresson movie! Incredible!
The film starts off in northern Africa as a British reporter named David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is collecting footage for a documentary on an unspecific political situation. Whilst back at his hotel, he discovers a felllow Brit, Robertson dead in his bed. In some wonderfully elaborate montages, the audience gets aural as well as visual flashbacks of their brief friendship. It is made quite clear that Locke hates his life and bizarrely decides to switch identities with Robertson.
The film then meanders around London, Munich and Spain as Robertson constantly attempts to integrate himself into his new role…and yet is doomed to fail, as he quickly learns nothing changes at all. In Barcelona, he meets a mysterious architecture student played by Maria Schneider and they drive around Spain. The ending is very odd…and wonderful.
This film is surely a lost masterpiece of 1970s cinema. The mise-en-scene is just wonderful…I need to see this film on a cinema screen to enjoy the widescreen photography and the spatial elements of figures and landscapes.
Go and see The Passenger…they sure as shit don’t make films like this any more! Bruno Dumont’s 29 Palms must certainly be inspired by this film.
I love discovering films that re-invigorate my interest in cinema. Wonderful cinematography by Luciano Tovoli too…he’s lensed some lovely stuff…Suspiria,Tenebrae, Titus…and seems to have been wasted on many a movie since.
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