The Passenger

The Passenger (Professione: reporter, 1975) is Michelangelo Antonioni's landmark existential thriller — watch it online on iFILM. Jack Nicholson plays David Locke, a burnt-out American journalist stranded in the Sahara with a story that's going nowhere. When the man in the next hotel room dies, Locke swaps their passport photos and walks away, trading his own empty life for a stranger's.

The dead man, it turns out, was an arms dealer. Now Locke is being tracked by both police and people with a stake in the dead man's business. Maria Schneider plays an unnamed young woman who joins him on the road across Spain and North Africa. Antonioni and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli built the film on long, patient takes where the landscape says what the characters won't. The unbroken seven-minute final shot still gets dissected in film schools.

Co-written by Mark Peploe and selected for the Cannes competition, The Passenger grew into one of the defining films of 1970s European art cinema. It rewards patience — and the tagline says it straight: "I used to be somebody else, but I traded him in." Stream The Passenger (1975) in full on iFILM.