Peter
Glenville’s transposition of playwright Bridget Boland’s controversial stage
theater hit The Prisoner to the
silver screen represents a major yet curiously overlooked chapter in the
checkered yet illustrious career of Sir Alec Guinness. In an intensely personal role, Guinness plays
a hard-nosed and seemingly indefatigable Cardinal in an unnamed fascist Eastern
European country who finds himself under arrest on charges of treason. Subjugated to a character only known as the
Interrogator (Jack Hawkins) who is assigned to extract a confession from the
unbending will of the Cardinal, the story takes on Orwellian proportions as the
Interrogator proceeds to systematically chip away at the Cardinal’s
psychologically defenses in search of his weaknesses.
Like
an extended version of the closing chapters of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The
Prisoner evolves into a tense, sustained study of one man’s ability to gradually
erode away another man’s mental barriers before striking his soft spot like a
scorpion. Though the film tries to
broaden the scope of the play with an unneeded thread involving a quasi-love
affair between a young guard and a citizen, The
Prisoner succeeds when it remains trained on the Interrogator’s dissection
of the Cardinal’s deteriorating psyche under duress and mind games. One standout sequence involves the Cardinal
in solitary confinement with additional efforts made to disorient his sense of
time and space as a prison guard brings the Cardinal his first meal in days
before bringing him another just minutes after while claiming days elapsed
since his last one.
For
Guinness, who was in the midst of converting to Catholicism and whose own past
bore a striking resemblance to the Cardinal’s, this was a full swing at
reshaping his once comedic image into a serious dramatic player. Having played the role onstage numerous times
under Glenville’s direction, it was only natural for the already notable screen
actor to reprise the Cardinal on film. Needless
to say, fans of Guinness should put The
Prisoner at the top of their viewing list as the actor gives his heart and
soul to the character, presenting himself in a fragile light not seen before or
since. The film also represented a shift
for the superb Jack Hawkins as the Kafkaian and bloodless Interrogator. Hawkins ordinarily played good guys in the
movies and seeing him as a cold and calculating adversary preying on the
Cardinal’s insecurities is as startling as it is chilling.
Upon
initial release, the film caused quite a stir with a wide variety of
misinterpretations of the material. In
Ireland it was perceived as pro-Communist, while France’s prestigious Cannes
Film Festival and the equally prestigious Venice Film Festival both banned it
outright for perceptions of anti-Communism.
Oddly, some Italian critics even dubbed it anti-Catholic though God only
knows how anyone watching could derive that idea. Despite however wildly off the mark it was
received in Eastern Europe, the film was nominated for five BAFTA Awards including
Best Picture and Best Actor for both Guinness and Hawkins. Further still the US based National Board of
Review named The Prisoner winner of
the Best Foreign Language Film Award.
And
yet for all the noise made about it both good and bad, The Prisoner is curiously overlooked with Guinness himself barely
touching on it in his various autobiographies. For such an important and critical role in the
celebrated actor’s career, to be swept under the rug from sight for so long
despite some of the loose ends mentioned earlier is unfortunate. Both actors are fantastic in it with Guinness
displaying a side of his personality I never thought I’d see. That so much of the actor’s own true life
experiences mirrored that of the Cardinal’s makes The Prisoner essential viewing for Guinness fans. The film’s controversies may have died down
with the tide of time and the subplot involving the young couple adds nothing, but
the electricity generated onscreen by Guinness and Hawkins is unforgettable and
remains as potent as ever!
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki