Hacker Cinema
The Passenger
Professione: reporter
1975 · Film · 126 min
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
David Locke is a world-weary American journalist who has been sent to cover a conflict in northern Africa, but he makes little progress with the story. When he discovers the body of a stranger who looks similar to him, Locke assumes the dead man's identity. However, he soon finds out that the man was an arms dealer, leading Locke into dangerous situations. Aided by a beautiful woman, Locke attempts to avoid both the police and criminals out to get him.
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Ah, no discussion about "impossible" shots is complete without mentioning the penultimate scene of Antonioni's masterpiece "Professione: Reporter" ("The Passenger"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvbqy8FZq8Y
I read somewhere that this is the film Jack Nicholson is most proud of.
> In a DVD commentary, decades later, Nicholson said Antonioni built the entire hotel so as to get this shot.
> Since the shot was continuous, it was not possible to adjust the lens aperture as the camera left the room and went into the square. Hence the footage had to be taken in the very late afternoon near dusk, in order to minimise the lighting contrast between the brightness outside and that in the room.
> The camera ran on a ceiling track in the hotel room and when it came outside the window, was meant to be picked up by a hook suspended from a giant crane nearly 30 metres high. A system of gyroscopes was fitted on the camera to steady it during the switch from this smooth indoor track to the crane outside. Meanwhile, the bars on the window had been given hinges. When the camera reached the window and the bars were no longer in the field of view, they were swung away to either side. At this time the camera's forward movement had to stop for a few seconds as the crane's hook grabbed it and took over from the track. To hide this, the lens was slowly and smoothly zoomed until the crane could pull the camera forward.[Note 1] Then the cameraman walked the camera in a circle around the square, giving the crew time to shut the window bars before the camera returned to look through the window from the outside this time. Antonioni directed the scene from a van by means of monitors and microphones, talking to assistants who communicated his instructions to the actors and operators. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passenger_(1975_film)