When Alec Guinness first appeared in the film looking so pious that he made Obi-Wan Kenobi seem a little uncouth, I thought "The Prisoner" would be hard work. However it repaid staying the course.
The film is set in an unknown Communist country. A popular cardinal (Alec Guinness) is arrested for treason. He's interrogated by a man he knows, played by Jack Hawkins with the same growling gravitas he projected as Khufu in "Land of the Pharaohs" made around the same time.
Attempts to break the Cardinal, and get him to confess, cause unrest. However the Interrogator (everyone is nameless) using non-violent, psychological methods eventually wears him down. A romance between a guard (Ronald Lewis) and a married woman (Jeanette Sterke) seems an odd add-on and goes nowhere.
Although the film is set mainly in a prison, and everyone speaks English, exteriors were shot in Belgium giving the feeling of a non-English location. Benjamin Frankel provided a powerful score that also helps open it out it from its stage origins.
The film was apparently inspired by a couple of famous cases that happened in lands that were firmly behind the Iron Curtain. Some thought it anti-Catholic and others thought it anti-Communist. Interestingly this was also during the McCarthy era.
The nonspecific style leaves it open to interpretation. Bridget Boland, the playwright, once said, "I am bored by domestic problems, and allergic to domestic settings. I succeed best with heavy drama". Maybe this one got too heavy and buckles a little in the second half as the interrogator finds the Cardinal's weak spot, his vanity.
Boland may have been inspired by George Orwell's 1984. The Interrogator is not unlike the understanding O'Brien who helps Winston Smith renounce his love for anyone other than Big Brother.
I can't help feeling that Boland also equates the Cardinal's persecution to that of Jesus, and Alec played it that way; he rarely loses his transcendental look. At one point, the Cardinal paraphrases what Jesus said about Caesar, "Render to the State the things that are the State's, and to God, the things that are God's".
In the end this film with its duel of ideologies gives food for thought, hopefully not the wrong ones.
The film is set in an unknown Communist country. A popular cardinal (Alec Guinness) is arrested for treason. He's interrogated by a man he knows, played by Jack Hawkins with the same growling gravitas he projected as Khufu in "Land of the Pharaohs" made around the same time.
Attempts to break the Cardinal, and get him to confess, cause unrest. However the Interrogator (everyone is nameless) using non-violent, psychological methods eventually wears him down. A romance between a guard (Ronald Lewis) and a married woman (Jeanette Sterke) seems an odd add-on and goes nowhere.
Although the film is set mainly in a prison, and everyone speaks English, exteriors were shot in Belgium giving the feeling of a non-English location. Benjamin Frankel provided a powerful score that also helps open it out it from its stage origins.
The film was apparently inspired by a couple of famous cases that happened in lands that were firmly behind the Iron Curtain. Some thought it anti-Catholic and others thought it anti-Communist. Interestingly this was also during the McCarthy era.
The nonspecific style leaves it open to interpretation. Bridget Boland, the playwright, once said, "I am bored by domestic problems, and allergic to domestic settings. I succeed best with heavy drama". Maybe this one got too heavy and buckles a little in the second half as the interrogator finds the Cardinal's weak spot, his vanity.
Boland may have been inspired by George Orwell's 1984. The Interrogator is not unlike the understanding O'Brien who helps Winston Smith renounce his love for anyone other than Big Brother.
I can't help feeling that Boland also equates the Cardinal's persecution to that of Jesus, and Alec played it that way; he rarely loses his transcendental look. At one point, the Cardinal paraphrases what Jesus said about Caesar, "Render to the State the things that are the State's, and to God, the things that are God's".
In the end this film with its duel of ideologies gives food for thought, hopefully not the wrong ones.