in acting upon it. Robertson's daybook in hand, David returns to Europe to follow the strand of the dead man's future wherever it will lead. To his distress, he finds it leading toward a greater commitment to the world. Locke fears this even more than he fears the men on Robertson's trail.

All he wants is the random life — to throw himself to the winds of coincidence. For a while he has a traveling companion who understands this, Maria Schneider as "The Girl" (the refusal to give her a name is the one silly touch in a film that otherwise steers clear of pretentiousness). She's an architecture student drawn to the charming, worried man in the convertible; he's on the run, but how can you run from yourself?

"The Passenger" is as much bitter, Bowles-ian travelogue as it is slow-motion chase film, and it passes through the African desert, London and Barcelona before coming to ground in a Spanish village. There David Locke's various selves converge in one of the more heroic camera shots in the history of cinema — an achingly graceful pan around a hotel room, through window bars, and out into a village square, where life goes on and the hero's rootlessness comes to an end. Slow as death and graceful as an angel, "The Passenger" continues to haunt.

"The Passenger" is rated PG-13 for violence, nudity and language. Running time: 119 minutes.