Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The Prisoner Blu-ray Movie Review

Is there a Thomas Tryon in the house?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 18, 2019

The Prisoner remains one of the most fondly remembered “cult television” offerings in the entire history of the medium. A “limited run” series before anyone had ever really heard of such a thing, The Prisoner offered a post-Danger Man Patrick McGoohan as some kind of governmental operative who is abducted and held hostage in a totally bizarre seaside “resort” where he is known only as Number 6. In our now long ago The Prisoner: The Complete Series Blu-ray review, I mentioned how prescient the series was in predicting a government which knew “every jot and tittle” about its citizens, but which wasn’t above utilizing “rendition” and “enhanced interrogation techniques” to disclose even more information. Something quite similar is at play in the 1955 film bearing the same name as the McGoohan series and perhaps surprisingly dealing with at least some tangentially related subject matters. If the McGoohan Prisoner is still rather well remembered decades after its original broadcast, quite the opposite has happened to the film starring Alec Guinness as another character without a “real” name, known in the film only as The Cardinal. As Neil Sinyard gets into in his “appreciation” of the film included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, The Prisoner was something of a cause célèbre in its day, being banned by various nations and/or film festivals for supposedly being either pro- or anti-Communist (yes, that is kind of hilarious), but also receiving a lot of critical acclaim and five British Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and not one but two nominations for Best Actor, for Guinness and his co-star Jack Hawkins. And yet, as Sinyard also mentions, The Prisoner is almost totally forgotten today for some reason, something this new Arrow edition can hopefully help to rectify.

Despite its almost carnival like ambience and the fact that it featured a remarkably colorful production design, the television Prisoner had a definite Kafkaesque quality, especially since Number 6 wasn’t ever quite sure of where he was or what his questioners were attempting to divine. The Prisoner (the film) offers stark black and white cinematography, something that probably only underlines the rather bleak emotional tenor of the film, but once again the ghost of Kafka runs pretty rampant through this piece, as once again it’s not disclosed (initally, at least) what The Interrogator (Jack Hawkins) is after, other than a kind of generalized suggestion that the government of the unnamed (and presumably Communist) country that is holding The Cardinal prisoner needs to “deface” (in the words of the Interrogator) the institution of the church (explicitly Catholic here).

Even that brief plot summary should prove to be enough to offer evidence that screenwriter Bridget Boland (adapting her own play, which also starred Guinness and was directed by Peter Glenville) certainly wants to tackle some provocative material. But there's a kind of dime store psychological aspect at play in this story that may actually kind of cheapen what I assume is meant to be a penetrating analysis of the fear "the opiate of the people" puts into some more fascistic types. The film plays out in a series of "two hander" scenes for the most part, with The Cardinal repeatedly interacting with The Interrogator, but also with his main guard, The Jailer (Wilfrid Lawson). There's also an arguably completely unneeded sidebar featuring another guard (Ronald Lewis) who is experiencing pangs of employment based conscience but who has no problem being involved with a married woman (Jeanette Sterke). There are a few other supporting characters who wander in and out of the tale, but the main progression is The Interrogator slowly but surely wearing down The Cardinal's resistance in order to get him to "confess".

But it’s in that very confession aspect that The Prisoner arguably misses the bullseye. There’s a lot of verbal sparring in the film, as might be expected, but the ultimate “revelation” The Cardinal offers in his last showdown with The Interrogator really has nothing to do with what feels like a tacked on trial scene, where The Interrogator finally goes into all sorts of previously unmentioned detail about what were supposedly The Cardinal’s nefarious activities during World War II (it’s been previously disclosed that The Interrogator and The Cardinal knew each other during the “resistance”, as it’s called in the film). The “confession” that The Cardinal makes is completely personal (and in fact according to both Sinyard and commentator Philip Kent, it's very personal in a way to Guinness himself), which would seem to support a hypothesis that Boland was attempting to get at some kind of psychological truth about a specific character, albeit one wrapped in a whole host of political and religious context. But that may make the film’s overly extended wind up have less impact, since first the story wallows for a time explicitly in both political and religious aspects, before kind of wandering back into a more private psychological element. It’s all kind of strange, and never quite achieves the emotional resonance it seems to be aiming for.

The film benefits from some good performances, with Hawkins especially managing to toe a precarious line between a kind of smarmy affability and a more menacing mien. Guinness is perhaps a bit too theatrical here, "indicating" a bit more than is his usual method (no pun intended). This was Peter Glenville's first film, and you can feel him trying to "open up" the staginess of the original, to only fitful effect.

The Prisoner Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Prisoner is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Academy with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet doesn't really offer much in the way of information about the transfer, stating only:

The Prisoner is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with mono sound. The High Definition master was provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Sony / Columbia has offered high definition enthusiasts some of the most lustrous catalog offerings of the Blu-ray era, but it's evident that whatever element was utilized for this transfer has not undergone any significant restoration. While there's nothing here that is going to seriously disappoint videophiles, this presentation displays pretty regular and recurrent age related wear and tear. Nothing in and of itself is huge or overly problematic, but there's really a ubiquity of small specks, scratches, dirt and other anomalies that are pretty nonstop throughout the presentation. If you carefully parse the screenshots accompanying this review, you can see admittedly small nicks and blemishes in some of them, typically toward the sides of the frame. The worst part of the film is what really amounts to a coda of sorts, where there is a host of different kinds of damage exacerbated by the fact that the whole sequence is comprised of a series of optical dissolves. You can see some examples of what I'm talking about in screenshots 19, 21, and 22. Certain variabilities in clarity also pop up momentarily here and there (see screenshot 6 for one of the "fuzzier" moments). All of this said, though, a lot of this presentation looks very good, with nice detail levels supporting things like the fabrics on costumes or the roughhewn walls of The Cardinal's jail cell. While there are a few minor fluctuations, contrast is also generally excellent. Grain resolves naturally throughout.

The Prisoner Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Prisoner features a fine sounding LPCM Mono track which capably supports what amounts to a nonstop array of dialogue for an hour and a half or so. There are occasional sound effects like the metallic clang of the jail cell door being closed and bolted, but for the most part this is a series of two person dialogue scenes, with occasional montages offered as interstitials. Benjamin Frankel's score sounds reasonably full bodied throughout.

The Prisoner Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interrogating Guinness (1080p; 23:49) offers Neil Sinyard's thoughts on the film.


• Selected Scenes Commentary (1080p; 15:02) features Philip Kent offering analysis of four sequences.

Additionally, Arrow has included their typically well appointed insert booklet.

The Prisoner Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Guinness completists will of course want to add this film to their collection, especially since Guinness also originated the role of The Cardinal on stage. But I'm frankly not sure how effective The Prisoner is in totality, and there seems to be some inherent ambiguity in what exactly Boland was trying to get at with this piece. That said, there's some nicely arch dialogue here, and Guinness and Hawkins are extremely well matched. Video is certainly watchable, but not at the top tier of some other Sony / Columbia efforts. Technical merits are solid and the two on disc supplements very enjoyable and informative for those considering a purchase.