The Passenger

TWO SCREEN EPICS REBORN: While most major feature films have already yielded multiple DVD releases and re-releases, two authentic modern classics saw belated disc debuts this year, both causes for celebration among fanatics. Warren Beatty's acclaimed "Reds," a look at the tumultuous... more career of journalist and American Communist John Reed, was an audacious, sweeping epic upon release in 1981, finally getting DVD release on its 25th anniversary. By contrast, Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger" (1975) was striking for its intimacy and isolation, focused on Jack Nicholson's role-playing journalist in an existential thriller, yet its vast desert locale and stunning seven-minute final take achieve their own sense of epic scale. Pictured are Nicholson, left, and Beatty in character.

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(Image: Paramount Pitures/Everett Collection & Everett Collection)