Locke (Jack Nicholson) reevaluates his life in Michelangelo Antonioni’s existential suspense thriller THE PASSENGER
ONE NITE ONLY: THE PASSENGER (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Tuesday, August 26, 9:30
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
Nominated for the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 1975, Michelangelo Antonioni’s existential suspense thriller is a fascinating character study of a lost, lonely man. Jack Nicholson stars as Locke, a successful, well-respected journalist who is researching a story on the guerrilla movement in Chad. Life isn’t as fun and exciting as it used to be for him, as witnessed by his utter helplessness after his car gets stuck in the sand. Upon returning to his hotel room, he discovers that his neighbor, Robertson (Chuck Mulvehill), is dead — and he decides to switch places with him, to stop being Locke and instead live a completely different existence. Even when he finds out that Robertson was involved in international espionage and gun running, Locke continues the deception, traveling dangerously through England, Germany, and Spain with a free-spirited young architecture student (Maria Schneider) while his wife (Jenny Runacre) and business associate (Ian Hendry) — and the police — try to find him. The Passenger is marvelously slow-paced, never in a hurry to make no point about just what the point of it all is. Nicholson glides through the film with an unease that is as unnerving as it is intoxicating as he struggles to find his way in life, a cinematic representative of something that is within each of us. The Passenger is screening in 35mm August 26 at 9:30 (followed by complementary Prym Rum drinks) as part of Nitehawk Cinema’s “One Nite Only” series and “Journalists in Film,” a collaboration with Vice News that continues September 30 with Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole and October 28 with Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men.