Cover of The Passenger

Although disappointed with Michelangelo Antonioni‘s The Passenger (1975), Stanley Kauffmann called the film “a fairly successful high-class entertainment.”  I pretty much agree with the “high-class entertainment” part, but not with the “fairly successful” judgment.  The narrative is too weak and mystifying for any ultimate success to emerge.

The film’s premise, as described by Kauffmann, is: “a man changes identity [illegally] and tries to live a new life.”  Antonioni transcends the entertainment value by summoning something interesting:  the man who tries to live a new life (Jack Nicholson) is taking a wayward course and is doing so in a world that is even more wayward.  In fact, because of how the film was shot, his waywardness and the world’s have a way of blending.

Less than compelling, The Passenger is very compellingly directed except where acting is concerned.  Antonioni’s eye is the one to have for a travelogue-like art film.

The Blue Gardenia, from 1953, is a small picture (a thriller) that has a way of seeming not so small. This is because Anne Baxter‘s Norah is such a tragic figure and the mystery here of a man’s death is pretty puzzling and involving.

A womanizer (Raymond Burr) gets Norah drunk and she thinks that in his apartment she might have murdered him. Alas, when an ace newspaper reporter (Richard Conte) dominates the plot, the movie starts to sag. It would have helped had the piece been a tad more cynical about newspaper reporters. (Gee, wouldn’t you know it? Conte develops a crush on Norah.)

The film was directed by Fritz Lang. As a police detective George Reeves, the original TV Superman, is one of the best things in it.

For years the U.S. will be either disrespected or hated in most parts of the world for its abandonment of American civilians and Afghan allies in Afghanistan. It will be seen as shockingly weak. And the overall weakness that is there, for various reasons, will drive numerous Americans to despise the Biden administration.

The venerable Bruce Beresford directed the excellent Tender Mercies and Mister Johnson, but knows he made a mistake in concocting King David (1985), a film about the biblical sovereign. An episodic drag, it features a David (Richard Gere) who never proves spiritual—or charismatic—enough, and fails to make many points about his life, such as his longing for Bathsheba, rightly explicit.

Some notable acting beams its way to us, but the voiceover narration adds nothing to KD, which, by the way, is not entirely faithful to the Old Testament text. Further, the only powerful scenes in the film are the violent ones. As I said, Beresford knows the movie is a failure. There are barely any grounds for seeing it.

A 1994 film, Intersection, seems like a modern French picture, does it not? That’s because it is an American remake of a modern French picture, and I would respect it more if it was an original product. It is, even so, a handsome-looking item put together by some talented people. Mark Rydell directed well enough, though he ought to have kept the film from getting soap-operaish. But the scene with a car crash at an intersection is pretty strong, and a couple of other scenes are too.

Richard Gere is exactly right as an architect separated from his wife because of his love for another woman. Sharon Stone gives the wife, Sally, a cool sensitivity and a certain fortitude. Lolita Davidovich is precisely what we would expect to see in an amiable, secular-minded woman, the architect’s mistress. Martin Landau is also absolutely fine.

Intersection shows us the breakthrough of romantic love, whether or not it should break through. Too, it is about death and the personal illusions that sometimes follow. It is a touching version of Les choices de la vie.