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IMDb > Professione: reporter (1975)
Professione: reporter
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Professione: reporter (1975) More at IMDbPro »

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Professione: reporter (1975) -- US Home Video Trailer from MGM
Professione: reporter (1975) -- US Home Video Trailer from MGM
Professione: reporter (1975) -- Open-ended Trailer from MGM

Overview

User Rating:
7.7/10   5,111 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 1% in popularity this week. See rank & trends on IMDbPro.
Writers:
Mark Peploe (story)
Mark Peploe (screenplay) ...
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Contact:
View company contact information for The Passenger on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
9 April 1975 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama | Mystery | Thriller more
Tagline:
I used to be somebody else...but I traded myself in.
Plot:
A frustrated war correspondent, unable to find the war he's been asked to cover, takes the risky path of co-opting the I.D. of a dead arms dealer acquaintance. full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
Awards:
4 wins & 1 nomination more
NewsDesk:
(5 articles)
Producer Bellville Dies
 (From WENN. 24 February 2009, 8:10 AM, PST)

R.I.P: Michelangelo Antonioni
 (From ioncinema. 31 July 2007)

User Comments:
Re-release of a classic more

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Jack Nicholson ... David Locke

Maria Schneider ... Girl
Jenny Runacre ... Rachel Locke
Ian Hendry ... Martin Knight
Steven Berkoff ... Stephen
Ambroise Bia ... Achebe
José María Caffarel ... Hotel Keeper
James Campbell ... Witch Doctor
Manfred Spies ... German Stranger
Jean-Baptiste Tiemele ... Murderer
Ángel del Pozo ... Police inspector
Charles Mulvehill ... Robertson, the Dead Man (as Chuck Mulvehill)
Narciso Pula ... Murderer's accomplice
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Miquel Bordoy
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Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

Also Known As:
The Passenger (International: English title) (UK)
El reportero (Spain)
Profession: reporter (France)
Beruf: Reporter (Austria) (Germany) (West Germany) [de]
Ammatti: Reportteri (Finland) [fi]
El pasajero (Argentina) [es]
Epangelma: Reporter (Greece) [el]
Foglalkozása: riporter (Hungary) [hu]
Profissão: Repórter (Portugal) [pt]
Yolcu (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Yrke: reporter (Sweden) [sv]
Zawód: reporter (Poland) [pl]
more
MPAA:
Rated PG-13 for some violence, nudity and language. (edited version)
Runtime:
126 min | 119 min
Country:
Italy | Spain | France
Color:
Color (Metrocolor)
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
After initially refusing the role, Maria Schneider did not sign until the film was several weeks into production. more
Quotes:
David Locke: What can you see now?
The Girl: [looking out the window] A man scratching his shoulder, a kid throwing stones, and dust. It's very dusty here.
more
Movie Connections:
Featured in Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) (TV) more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
31 out of 37 people found the following comment useful:-
Re-release of a classic, 3 October 2005
9/10
Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

Michelangelo Antonioni: The Passenger (Italy/France 1975). 128 minutes. Release by Sony Classics Pictures release. Release date: October 28, 2005. Shown at the New York Film Festival: October 8, 2005.

Thirty years later, Michelangelo Antonioni's re-released "The Passenger" is looking very good, and so are Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, as the journalist who takes a dead man's identity in the Sahara and the girl he meets in Barcelona who decides to tag along. David Locke (Nicholson) takes the passport of a man named Robertson who he's had a few drinks with in a hotel. Before that we see Locke experience frustration, giving away cigarettes to men in turbans who say nothing, abandoned by a boy guide, dumping a Land Rover stuck in the sand. Later we see films that show as a journalist he was subservient to bad men. Locke has Robertson's appointment book which leads him to Munich, then various points in Spain. He learns Robertson was a committed man taking risks: he sold arms to revolutionaries whose causes he thought were just. He gets a huge down-payment.

Then Locke's wife gets a tape of him talking to Robertson and his passport with Robertson's photo pasted into it -- and she gets the picture.

Changing your identity and using someone else's isn't just an existential act, it's also a criminal one. Locke's gambit is hopeless: he winds up fleeing from himself. The film skillfully gives its action story an existential underpinning. The chase keeps up a rapid pace, like the Bourne franchise, but it has time to contemplate Locke's old and new lives in a metaphorical story he tells Schneider about a blind man that explains how he ends up.

Antonioni is great at little incidentals -- a girl chewing bubblegum, a man reciting in a Gaudi building. And at the end, people coming and going in a desolate plaza outside a bullfighting amphitheater. The locations provide exotic glamor. The camera-work of course is wonderful. In retrospect now one can see this was definitely a culmination for Antonioni. He thought it technically his best film. This is the director's preferred European version, originally released as "Professione: Reporter."

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Recent Posts (updated daily)User
a great movie let down by schneider's performance? Hudsucker111
Nicholson's best ? Batmanjr
Anyone else obsessed with Maria Schneider? victorthevictorious
YAWN: Berkeley, Calif., Mecca of Cretins bluesdoctor
Faye Dunaway originally signed to co-star? Pilgrim07
How about that stock fly buzzing at the start... zurichpoet
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