“We Translate Every Experience into the Same Old Codes”: In Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘The Passenger,’ Jack Nicholson Attempts a Transference of Self: “Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 film The Passenger is a languid thriller in which not much seems to happen, beautifully. The protagonist, David Locke (Jack Nicholson), a weary journalist chasing rebels in Chad, on a seeming whim swaps identities with a similar looking fellow traveler Robertson (Chuck Mulvehill) he finds dead from a heart attack in their dusty hotel, after their previous evening’s drinking. Locke seeks to leave his old life behind (‘I’ve run out of everything… Everything except a few bad habits I couldn’t get rid of.’), following a bread crumb trail of appointments in the other man’s diary across Europe, picking up a fellow passenger, ‘The Girl’ (Maria Schneider) along the way. He realizes the other man was an arms dealer for the rebels, and is expected to deliver weapons, for which he receives a handsome down payment. …”
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YouTube: The Passenger | Trailer – Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider