‘The Passenger’: Nicholson Shines in Antonioni’s Underrated Masterpiece

Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Passenger” (1975) marked a special collaboration between the director and his star, Jack Nicholson. Their daring, highly unusual film, now 50 years old, is a challenging work and deserves to be rediscovered. When we meet Locke, played by Nicholson, he’s a reporter on assignment in the Sahara Desert, finding himself alone and unhappy. His vehicle stuck in the sand, Locke defeatedly returns to his rundown room for rent and discovers that his neighbor has died. Rather than report it, Locke is suddenly hit with an idea and runs with it: Locke steals the dead man’s identity and flees the country. Locke was originally on the search for truth, but his journey became about creating and maintaining his own, original existence. When Locke meets a character identified a