Superficially, The Passenger is an assumed-identity film that observes the conventions of the genre as if they were rubrics for an ancient liturgy. The genre works according to a formula that admits of some variation depending on whether the masquerade is a comic ruse (Wilder's The Major and the Minor and Some Like It Hot), a means of saving face (Capra's Lady for a Day), or a matter of survival (Paul Henreid's Dead Ringer). In its more serious form, the assumed identity film has the following features: (1) the masquerade ends in failure, often in death; (2) the pretender becomes a fugitive from society, forsaking even his wife and friends; (3) if he takes on the identity of someone with underworld connections, he will run afoul of the syndicate because of his inability to deliver what it expects of him; (4) the pretender then becomes a man on the run, and his...