The Passenger

The Passenger is a 1975 drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Written by Antonioni, Mark Peploe, and Peter Wollen, the film is about a disillusioned Anglo-American journalist, David Locke (Jack Nicholson), who assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the current civil war. Along the way, he is accompanied by an unnamed young woman (Maria Schneider). The Passenger was the final film in Antonioni's three-picture deal with producer Carlo Ponti and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after Blowup (1966) and Zabriskie Point (1970). During the film's release, it was in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Nicholson received the film rights from MGM shortly after it was released and reportedly kept it out of distribution until, "Sony persuaded him that they would give it a classy send-off." Sony Pictures Classics fully remastered the film and has re-released it on DVD. Plot David Locke is a disaffected television journalist in northern Chad, looking to interview rebel fighters who are involved in the ongoing civil war. Struggling to find interviewees, he is further frustrated when his Land Rover gets stuck in a sand dune after being abandoned by guides. After a long walk through the Sahara back to his hotel, an exhausted Locke discovers that a fellow guest (Robertson), an Englishman with whom he had struck up a casual friendship, died in his room overnight. Locke decides to switch identities with Robertson and reports his own death at the front desk, the plan going off without a hitch. Locke collects Robertson's belongings, which include a pistol, an appointment book and passport. He alters the passport to carry his own photo.