Birthday of The Passenger, or Anniversary of the Professione: reporter
On February 28, 1975, the premiere of Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Professione: reporter (The Passenger)" took place in Turin, Italy.
In the mid-60s, Michelangelo Antonioni signed a contract with the famous Italian film producer Carlo Ponti to make three films. In accordance with this contract, in 1966 the film "Blowup" was created, in 1970 - the picture "Zabriskie Point". The third was to be a film based on the story of Italo Calvino "The Adventures of a Photographer" about how a certain journalist tries to get lost in the Amazon forests. However, during the work on this film, it turned out that filming in the Amazonian forests was too expensive for the producer, and he decided to drastically change the content of the project. Carlo Ponti's financial troubles were largely due to the box office failure of "Zabriskie Point".
Then screenwriter Mark Peploe proposed his story "Fatal Exit" as the basis for the script, the content of which somewhat echoed the story of Italo Calvino, but which took place in Africa and Europe, and therefore made it possible to reduce filming costs. Mark Peploe is the brother of Clare Peploe, wife of Bernardo Bertolucci. Mark Peploe is also known as the co-author of the screenplay for Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor".
Initially it was assumed that the film would be called "The Passenger". This name was explained by the fact that the script of the film provided that in the wanderings of Locke (Jack Nicholson) and The Girl (Maria Schneider), it is The Girl who will be the driver of the car, and Locke will be her passenger. But then it turned out that Maria Schneider did not know how to drive a car. Antonioni had to change the script. In addition, the authors decided that there was already a film with the name "Passenger" and it was quite good (meaning the Polish film of 1963 "Pasazerka (Passenger)", and therefore in the European film market the film was released under the name "Profession: Reporter". In English-speaking countries, it was shown under the original name "The Passenger".
Shortly after the premiere, in May 1975, the film was nominated for the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival. But the jury of the film festival, chaired by Jeanne Moreau, awarded the main prize to the Algerian film "Chronicle of the Years of Fire". To some extent, “consolation” for Michelangelo Antonioni and his film can be considered that the company of “losers” for him was Martin Scorsese with the film “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore”, Sergey Bondarchuk with the film “They Fought for Their Country” and some others. The following year, 1976, the film "Profession: Reporter" was awarded the Danish Bodil Prize as the best European film.
By the way, the Soviet Union in the jury of the Cannes Film Festival was represented by Yulia Ippolitovna Solntseva, wife and associate of an outstanding Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, the first woman director in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, awarded the First Prize for directing. I dare to suggest that during the vote, Yulia Solntseva cast her vote for the Algerian picture: its name very much resembled the name of the Solntseva film, for which it received its award - "The Story of the Flaming Years".
But back to the Antonioni movie. In the summer of 1975, the film "Profession: Reporter" participated in the Moscow International Film Festival, but only as part of an out-of-competition screening, thanks to which it was released to the screens of Soviet cinemas. And this fact is surprising for two reasons. Firstly, the film "Profession: Reporter" was the only one of the films of the so-called English-speaking trilogy Antonioni, which became available to the Soviet mass cinema audience. (Soviet movie-goers had to wait 15-20 years to get acquainted with the other two films of the trilogy - “Blowup” and “Zabriskie Point.”) And secondly, the sagacity of Soviet film distributors was surprisingly manifested, since several years after the film was released for various legal reasons the ownership of the film passed to Jack Nicholson, and for nearly twenty years he banned its screening in cinemas in Europe and America. Well, the significance of all sorts of "copyrights" in the USSR was well known to everyone.
Strangely enough, this many-year break in showing the film on the screens played a positive role in terms of its evaluation by film critics. If immediately after the release of the film on the screens, the reaction of film critics was not that negative, but rather indifferent, then after 30 years, when it was re-released, already on DVD, the reviews of critics were mostly enthusiastic. This was very clearly formulated by Roger Ebert, who wrote in 2005 in the amendment to the 1975 review:
"I did not admire the film in 1975. In a negative review, I observed that Antonioni had changed its title from "The Reporter" to "The Passenger," apparently deciding it was about the Girl, not Locke. ... I admire the movie more 30 years later. I am more in sympathy with it."
As for the audience rating, almost 60% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film "Profession: Reporter" according to FilmGourmand version is 7.886, and this allows it to occupy 867th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
