Moon In The Gutter: The Passenger

Sunday, June 28, 2026

Antonioni: Three Scenes

Every film that Antonioni shot has at least one sequence that is, at the very least, totally awe inspiring and never less than extremely moving. Here are three of the most celebrated.
First up are the final shots of L'ECLISSE which is one of the most memorable endings in all of screen history. No shot is repeated and the silence is overpowering, this is film making at its most subtle and finest.

Next up is the closing sequence from ZABRISKIE POINT. Set at first to silence and then to Pink Floyd's CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE EUGENE. This is simply one of the most mind blowing series of shots ever committed to celluloid, with Antonioni bravely exposing the materialistic baggage we carry with us constantly as the disposable junk much of it is. I still find this series of shots to be as breathtaking as anything in cinema, or art in general for that matter. The sixties end here.

Finally the astonishing final one shot take from THE PASSENGER. I saw this on the big screen a couple of years back and it caused me to audibly gasp. Before CGI made the impossible very boring, this amazing and magical sequence stands as a reminder of the possibilities of cinema.

My tribute to the late and already much missed Michelangelo Antonioni will continue tomorrow. Thanks to the people who have been reading and helping me pay tribute to this extraordinary man.

A New Career In A New Town

"I met a new me at 8 am, the other one got lost,
this was not a trade in, although I wouldn't believe the cost.
I woke up crying as we said goodbye,
me an my old self, each day he vanished more and more
as I became someone else."
-Lou Reed, Trade In-

"I am the passenger
I stay under glass
I look through my window so bright
I see the stars come out tonight
I see the bright and hollow sky."
-David Bowie, Iggy Pop, The Passenger-

When thinking about Antonioni's greatest film it is RED DESERT that typically pops into my mind. However I find as I am getting older it is his 1975 feature THE PASSENGER that I return to more and more.
I first saw THE PASSENGER just after I got my drivers licence when I was sixteen. There was an Evansville video store that had a small foreign section and it was here that I found Antonioni's masterpiece in one of those oversize clam shell boxes that was covered in dust. The cover shot of a beautifully bruised and tragic looking Jack Nicholson standing in a doorway was incredibly evocative and I have been sorry to not see it used more.

While I admired the film on that first viewing, I think I was perhaps too young to completely appreciate what it was that Nicholson's David Locke was running from. Add that on to the fact that that old full frame and faded VHS copy did everything it could to drain all the artistic life out of Michelangelo's film. Although I saw this film several times in this way throughout my teens and twenties, I didn't truly experience it until I saw it a couple of years back at a Louisville theater for it's re-release.
That theatrical experience was interesting. The theater was surprisingly crowded and there have only been a handful of films that I had ever been more excited to see. I have also never been more personally offended by a series of walk outs in a film, as there were a few. Seeing THE PASSENGER restored and on a big screen was for me a remarkable and hypnotic experience.

There were several things that jumped out at me that afternoon in the theater. The color of the sky in the opening shots of this film in indescribable and throughout the picture Luciano Tavoli's color photography is nearly too beautiful to look at. It literally was like seeing a different film than that old VHS copy. Another thing that stood out was Maria Schneider, the sometimes maligned LAST TANGO IN PARIS star is so effective in this picture as the girl who might be controlling much more than anyone can imagine. The shot of her standing in the car with her arms outstretched as the treetops envelope her from behind is one of the most remarkably composed shots of Antonioni's career, and Schneider looks like one of the great lost Art House icons of all time in it.

A few other thoughts I had were that Jack Nicholson, easily one of the greatest American actors, has never been better in a role. There is such an intensity to his performance in this film and I can think of very few American stars who would have been willing to play a role like this, and even less who could have done it so beautifully.
The final thought I had about the film, and it came to me shortly after the astonishing seven minute long one shot take that still baffles me even though I have heard it explained. The thought was this, that THE PASSENGER was the closing chapter to the great European Art House movement. That's not to suggest that there haven't been other art house films, or films as a completely pure and sacred art form (Kieslowski's THREE COLORS TRILOGY certainly springs to mind) but after 1975 things did surely change. Much like RAGING BULL and BLOW-OUT feel like the furious last gasps of the American film movement of the Seventies, then indeed THE PASSENGER seems like a hypnotic coda to a remarkable period when it wasn't just possible to make a film like this but also a time when anyone would bother.

The only other time I can remember being so hypnotized by a theatrical experience was when I saw the restored print of Peter Weir's PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK in the mid nineties. Coming out of the theater that afternoon the sun felt positively blinding and I was so wiped out emotionally that Islept for what felt like hours when I got home that afternoon.
I think it wasn't just Michelangelo's remarkable direction of THE PASSENGER that got me so much but it was a real personal connection to the lost David Locke. In the past decade I have felt more and more like that character, who wants nothing more than not only a new life but the ability to erase his old one (or as David Bowie would put it two years after this film, "A New Career In A New Town). Antonioni finally suggests that perhaps finding this way out, this trade in, might not be all its made out to be. Maybe we are all in our own way looking for a our own personal trade in but sometimes just going along for life's ride is the only way out. I don't know, I find it difficult to express my emotions about David Locke and Antonioni's film, all I know is that there are few films that have spoken to me more about the increasingly disconnected nature of my life that this one.
THE PASSENGER might not ever be held in the same esteem as the trilogy of black and white films Antonioni shot in the early sixties but I suspect it will continue to grow in prestige. It is a remarkable film that is, much like the man who made it, truly timeless.

Maria Schneider R.I.P.

Maria Schneider, a truly great European Film Icon, has reportedly passed away at the tragically young age of just fifty-eight. Maria, whose performances in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris and Antonioni's The Passenger are the stuff of legend, was one of my favorite actors and I am so saddened to hear this news this morning. I will be posting a full tribute in the upcoming days but I did want to take a moment to pass along my best to her friends and family.

She was truly unique and brought something extremely special to every film she appeared in throughout her iconic career.