To begin at the end: the renowned seven-minute single-take represents a merge, of sorts, of the basic camera movements of two Michael Snow experiments, Wavelength and La Region Centrale, plus a bit of extra hocus-pocus at the precise point of the merge. But whereas Snow's camera movements each had the virtue of defining the shape of the film as a whole, Antonioni's maneuver, something to stumble over, sticks out spectacularly from the overall surface of his placid, cryptic suspense story. The didactic script by Mark Peploe and Peter Wollen has to do with an uncommitted journalist who switches identities, when the opportunity presents itself, with a corpse in the adjacent hotel room. The corpse turns out to be a gunrunner involved in the insurrection the journalist is covering, and the latter, suddenly transformed from impartial onlooker to imperiled participant, keeps the appointments somewhat imprudently listed in the dead man's datebook and bluffs his way through a ridiculous rendezvous in a German church with an African revolutionary, who flips through some Xeroxed illustrations of firearms and muses aloud, "A pity about the anti-aircraft guns." The actors seem unsure how they are to play their roles and to say their loaded lines ("I prefer men to landscapes." "I never used to notice coincidence; now I see it all around me"); and their insecurity is catching. Among the certainties of this movie: some fine color work, some striking images, some sophisticated sound effects. With Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.