Who is Michelangelo Antoini? :D

Watching the restored version last year on the big screen truly made me realize that The Passenger is nothing short of a masterpiece, and it's arguably one of Antonioni's 2 or 3 best films.

Here's what critic Robert Koehler, who played a role in its restoration, had to say about the release:

"What caused this unexpected, delayed timing to meet up with current events? According to Nicholsons attorney Ken Kleinberg, the actor had long wanted to purchase the worldwide rights to a film he loved as an art collector might; if he wasnt able to hang it on a wall, he could at least protect the film from potential corporate skullduggery and exercise some control over its proper exhibition. This is painfully ironic, since The Passenger had been mutilated to begin with. Antonioni had first made a four-hour cut of the film himself, and then brought in editor Franco Arcalli to trim it to JUST under two-and-a-half hours. This was still too long for MGM, which demanded a cut under two hours for the North American market, and required that it be titled The Passenger (certainly a more interesting title than the one its generally known by on other continents"Professione: Reporter.") At 118 minutes, the MGM version is shorter than Professione by approximately five minutes, and excludes two crucial scenes, one dealing with Lockes surreptitious return visit to his London home, where he finds evidence of Rachels infidelities with her lover Stephen (played with feral intensity by the great Steven Berkoff, whose name is misspelled in the closing credits, and whose screen time was clearly greater in the nearly 150-minute version.). In one of the last interviews he conducted before his massive stroke in 1983, Antonioni publicly condemned the MGM version, and was so disturbed at the cuts forced on him that he considers the longer version mutilated as well.

Nevertheless, Nicholson, through his company Proteus Films, negotiated a purchase of the negative in 1983, and obtained global rights to all versions in 1986. As part of an asset sale of portions of the MGM library to Ted Turner, the film was licensed to video for Warner Home Video until 1992. (This video version, a poor, non-letterboxed, full-screen transfer, has been the format in which most have seen the film for the past two decades.) A new round of video licensing continued in the 90s, all involving tape transfers of Professione in various countries, except in Japan where the license was held long enough for a DVD edition. (Its the only one to date, and, while a less than optimum transfer, its an instantly hot item for cinephiles with multiregion players. This version is now out of print.)

Nicholson was unhappy with all suitors for a theatrical and subsequent DVD release until discussions began with Sony Pictures Classics in early 2003, with a deal finalized in May 2004. In the meantime, Professione only rarely popped up on the special exhibition and festival circuit: in Canada, Cinematheque Ontarios 1998 screening as part of its comprehensive Antonioni retrospective amounted to a sighting of Halleys Comet. The new release print is culled from elements that have resided in reportedly excellent film vaults.

But nothing is ever simple with The Passenger. Sony Classics was originally intending to release Antonionis hated MGM edition. As part of the research for this essay, I came across Antonionis unqualified condemning statement (on page 218 of the edited compilation of the directors writings and interviews, "The Architecture of Vision") and passed it along to Michael Barker, co-President of Sony Classics and Richard Pena, director of the New York Film Film Festival, where the film is receiving a special presentation. The evidence, fortunately, was convincing enough for Sony Classics to pull the MGM version and instead release the longer version, which will retain the title of The Passenger. That there has been no apparent effort to search for the 20-odd minutes worth of material (described vividly by Antonioni in "The Architecture of Vision," in a chapter tellingly titled "The Passenger that you didnt see") which made up the longer version before the final excisions is clearly a tragedyfor the moment at least. Antonioni, turning 93 on September 29, remains vital and active, as does the work to restore and maintain his oeuvreto say nothing of the vigorous movement in film archival restoration and (albeit sometimes controversial) projects to "reconstruct" previously trimmed films, from Touch of Evil (1958) to The Big Red One (1980). For a film about a man seeking to find another self, it should be possible to find this other Passenger, and bring its own history back full circle."