The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 301

Rep lity and Vision Meet furious feeling, a totally different ap Hi! his The Lcdrce Pizza People thank voir ijonunuea nam 1 far sharina Christmas with us. and Dl ore looking forward to an exciting. New Year starting with this record and tape sale from Columbia Records, if(w; to Jack alone because I wanted him to be Sn that mood, because the character-has this uncertainty about him." What makes "Profession: unusually interesting apart from the fact that nearly defunct MGM was pre--pared to put $2.8 million into it after the cosmic disaster ($10 million) of his last film "Zabriskie Point'-' is that his hero is a man with a genuine mission: to discover a new identity. Nicholson a TV reporter who on an assignment finds a dead man in a seedy hotel in the middle of the North African desert With a failed marriage and a jaundiced attitude toward his life and career, he takes over the man's possessions and passport and tries to establish himself in the identity. It is an emotional; of rediscovery that ends in tragedy.

Maria Schneider, who danced to dubious fame in "Last Tango in Paris," plays a student he picks up on the way. Ian Hendry is his TV boss, and Jenny Runacre, an intriguing newcomer, plays his wife. "I never talk about my films because I don't want to lose interest for the prospective said Antonioni. "I always find I have lost something if I go to a cinema and know too much about the film I am going to see. I'm a very good spectator, you know! Following Destiny "In fact, in this one there isn't very much to say: I simply follow the desti (including Jonie- including- A CnfA SUCH AS mi- Ire $6.98 Lis Price I Price i proach for me.

1 nave oeen lorcea io reflect about it for long periods. Then, little by little, I started to get involved in the story. At the end, everything was clear." Clear to the maestro, if not to anyone else. Ian Hendry, an outspoken and experienced British actor, said simply: "Half the time I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. They'd hand me three new pages of script an hour before I walked on to the set." Adding feelingly.

"Some of those Italian directors want a smart kick in the pants to get them moving!" 'Nicholson, more subtly, has said of his experiences: "It's like being in the army, something you discipline yourself to get through not something you enjoy." Jenny Runacre, a 5-foot 9-mch redhead who first startled London audiences with her nude display in On! Calcutta!" and is currently being hailed as an exciting find, came under the Antonioni spell early on. She was auditioned in Paris. "He'd seen loads of people, including Faye Dunaway," she says. "I still don't know why I got the part All I know is that he was looking for someone he hadn't used before. I was terrified of him when I went in but I came out wanting to work for him more than anything else in the -world 1 found him incredibly perceptive-.

In the end it was like radar, there was just nothing he wouldn't see." And Maria. Schneider? "I didn't think I would "like working for him at the beginning," she told me. "His reputation is formidable. But as time went on I grew to like him. He treated me very gently.

I like him because you can. get through to him. He understands you as if he's reading an open book." Way to Truth Ask Antonioni how close the theme of the film is to his own outlook, and he shrivels away from the question. "A change of identity? It's tempting, of course. But it's a very private part of me, a private world, and I don't want to tell you that." Today, between films, he lives, a quiet bachelor life in Rome.

"Perhaps I've changed during the years we all. grow don't we? It's astonishing to me that so few people can adapt themselves to change without feeling uneasy. That's what I tried to say in 'Red "My heroes are realists. Myself, I'm not a pessimist, simply very practical. I'm still here making films, and against all the problems I've had in the past, how can I be a pessimist? The heroes I choose are the way to the truth for me.

"When people ask me how I would like to be remembered, my first reaction is that I shouldn't like to think of myself dead! "Perhaps I might be remembered as someone who could pick up beautiful images, someone who could see. "I am often asked if I believe in God, and that too is difficult to answer, particularly if you live in Rome under the Papal umbrella. I always remember the character in Hemingway who was asked the same question. After a lot of thought he replied: 'Sometimes at And as he smiled for the second time, in two hours and shook hands and said "Ciao!" and headed for the flight to Barcelona, you could be sure of one thing: Antonioni believes in Antonioni night and day. I rock on I A rfow'i mm- -i 1 I i OS THE kuau -w 1 .1.

J'lA1' OnThe Road To FrMdom ny of the reporter. What fascinates me jk that here is a man of 40 who could think he could ever realize his dreams, his ambitions, his will to be more committed to life by starting all over again. "Perhaps we would all like such a chance. This man takes the opportunity to change his identity because he is a frustrated man. He's not happy with his wife or his children or his job.

When the chance comes he starts again completely free. For a man that age it's an unexpected adventure and yet he inherits, as he must, a' whole new. lot of problems. "It's possible, you know. I'll tell you something really strange.

We were in the middle of shooting when I met a young 'marl who" had been in-the Foreign Legion. He and a friend were punished for. some offense. The punishment was that they were taken to a lonely spot in the middle of the desert and left for 15 days "to survive with food for only three days. His friend died, and he took over the friend's identity.

It is a true story which I heard only after we began the film. "Now I'm really curious to see what it will be like. I've got six hours of film to edit: It's such a mosaic: one shot here, another there. We had to start from the middle, in Munich, and then we went to the beginning. It's all kjnd of a mess, and that's why I'm so curious to put all this stuff together." The original screenplay, a departure from Antonionj's usual practice of writing fronihis own ideas, came from ah writer, Mark Pep-loe, 28, and as a small-budget movie for Carlo PontL Then it blossomed into a major film, directed by Antonioni.

as the third in a three-pic-, So Sad (No lov ui -7- 1 w. Will Shin Hurry, Sale ends Nonassfe exchange pocy. 13 iW. 5th Street MUSIC STORES Anaheim 621 W.Lincdln (714) 778-5898 North Hollywood 12802 Victory Blvd. ure deal for MGM after "Blow-Up" and 1 wanted Mark to shoot it.

But it's quite an expensive film and nobody wanted to risk anvone but me. dOHTR nay 1 6807 Hawthorn Blvd. 370-7277 Canecja Park 6559 Topanga Canyon Blvd. 884-8234 West LA. 477-7400 ffu oc Costa Mesa I8H Newport Blvd.

(714 645-0566 Santa Ana So. Bristol Avenue (7J4J S45-526? '3HK' limri'l. 1 pit 112 I am related to it in some way, yet I 1r i3 Laxewooa Diva 8414 lor a long time it was not mine. It was 862- ispi Jt Kin pi A MitfluwHiw wLtrsuAK, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1973.