The Passenger is a film directed and co-written by Michelangelo Antonioni, released in 1975, in which Jack Nicholson stars as a television reporter in Africa who assumes the identity of a dead stranger. The film competed for the "Palme d'Or" award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Coupled with a train ride, this film is the basis for the 1977 Iggy Pop song The Passenger . David Locke is a television journalist making a documentary film on post-colonial Africa. To finish the film, he is in the Sahara desert seeking to meet with and interview rebel fighters involved in Chad's civil war.... Struggling to find rebels to interview, his frustrations reach a climax when his Land Rover gets hopelessly stuck on a sand dune. After a long walk through the desert back to his hotel a thoroughly glum Locke finds that an Englishman by the name of Robertson , who has also been staying there and with whom he had struck up a friendship, has died overnight in his hotel room. Locke switch identities with Robertson; he is tired of his work, his marriage and his life, and senses an opportunity to start over.
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