The Passenger

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. Unrated. Plays Friday to Monday, November 18 to 21, and Thursday, November 24, at the Pacific Cinémathí¨que

There's something in the restored version of Michelangelo Antonioni's last incontrovertible masterpiece for just about everybody. The archivally minded will appreciate the fact that we're finally getting to see the slightly longer European cut of this 1975 English-language film, while technical purists will rejoice in the improved soundtrack that permits us to better hear the ambient noises of both the natural and unnatural (read industrialized) worlds. Narrative enthusiasts will be treated to a plot that expertly mingles the narrative universes of Paul Bowles and Patricia Highsmith, following with taut stomach muscles the unpredictable trajectory of David Locke (Jack Nicholson), a disaffected TV journalist who assumes the identity of the businessman who dies in the African hotel room next to his. He then discovers that the dead man's business was arms-smuggling and that a lot of people are out looking for him, some of them with murderous intent.

Aficionados of genre cinema, meanwhile, will get to experience the toniest road movie of all time, vicariously wandering from the African desert to the lost towns of Andalusia. Then, of course, there's that astonishing seven-minute-sequence shot that wraps up the plot in a tragically ecstatic way, putting the theory of Michael Snow's celebrated Wavelength into splendidly dramatic practice. Even unabashed romantics will have their day, because they will be able to feast their eyes on Maria Schneider at her most wistfully lovely, not to mention a still youthful, flat-bellied Jack.

So, is anything wrong with this 30-year-old feature?

Yes. About 12 lines of dialogue are pretentious clunkers. Otherwise, it's pretty much a perfect movie.

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