The Passenger

The Passenger (Italian: Professione: reporter) is a 1975 drama thriller 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 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). The film received strong reviews, with critics praising Antonioni's direction, Nicholson's performance, the cinematography, and its themes of identity, disillusionment and existentialism. During the film's release, it was in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was originally released by MGM through United Artists in the United States, but in partial settlement of a dispute over a different project, Nicholson received the film rights and reportedly kept it out of video distribution until Sony Pictures offered to remaster and re-release it. In 2005, with Nicholson's consent, Sony Pictures Classics remastered the film, giving it a limited theatrical re-release on 28 October 2005, and releasing it on DVD on 25 April 2006.