The Prisoner - Set 3: The Schizoid Man/Many Happy Returns/It's Your Funeral
by Patrick McGoohan, Robert Asher, Don Chaffey, Pat Jackson, David Tomblin
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Angelo Muscat, Fenella Fielding, George Markstein, Patrick McGoohan, Peter SwanwickDirector: David Tomblin, Don Chaffey, Pat Jackson, Patrick McGoohan, Robert Asher
Brand: A&E
Primary Contributor: Patrick McGoohan
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 156 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Prisoner - Set 3: The Schizoid Man/Many Happy Returns/It's Your Funeral
Movie Review: Questions are a burden to others
Summary: 5 Stars
SPOILER ALERT!!! What follows divulges show secrets. If you haven't seen The Prisoner, do NOT read on. (I am assuming that most people at all interested in a show as old as The Prisoner have already seen it.)
Now, with that said, The Prisoner is easily, hands down, without any reservations the single greatest TV show in history. (A close second, in my book, would be the first four Doctors on the ORIGINAL run of Doctor Who.) The Prisoner wasn't only entertaining, it was thought provoking. To call it "Kafkaesque" is now clich?, though its similarities to Kafka's The Trial are many and striking. In The Trial a man is told he must defend himself in a bizarre court but cannot learn what the charge is. He never does. In The Prisoner a man learns he is a prisoner in a place called "The Village," a bizarre prison disguised as a luxury resort. The reasoning behind the prison is that prisoners will be so taken with the luxuries at hand that they will find no reason to escape. For No. 6, the sheer fact that he is not free to escape if he wishes is reason enough to do it. He spends the entire series trying to escape.
After discovering that the man in charge of The Village is himself (yes, No. 6 is No. 1), he manages to leave the Village. Or does he? Notice that when he finally gets home his door opens on its own, just like the doors in The Village. For those who didn't catch on, McGoohan later (in an interview) told us what it all means: No. 6 never escaped. He's still in The Village. Society IS The Village. If you live in society, you ARE a prisoner. But you pretty much HAVE to live in a society, which means you pretty much HAVE to be a prisoner. There is no escaping this fact. As McGoohan had achieved fame with Danger Man, he discovered he was prisoner to a contract he deeply regretted signing. He wanted to escape. Ironically, he was playing a spy on Danger Man, and resigned as star of the show. He then made The Prisoner, about a man who quits his job as a government agent. This has created much debate as to whether No. 6 in The Prisoner is in fact meant to be Drake from Danger Man. McGoohan has said no, but The Prisoner's other main writer and script editor has emphatically said yes. You decide. (I'll go with McGoohan, as I think his ultimate point is that everybody is No. 6. He once said that at the end of the show, he wishes the words "The Beginning" had appeared.)
McGoohan is obviously a libertarian. He despises bureaucracy, authority, and big government. He has said he loves the first amendment, adding emphatically that there can be no freedom without privacy. Thus we see why the greeting in The Village, "be seeing you," is so ominous to No. 6. Sure, it sounds like "see you later," but is really a way of reminding everyone in The Village that they are always under surveillance.
The show and No. 6's character traits and struggle has stayed with me, ever since I first saw it as a child. McGoohan is easily my favorite actor, and it is a true shame he did not star in more movies. I've always loved his devotion to his wife and children, how he never lets his work come before them, how he refuses to film any type of love scene because he doesn't want to kiss anyone but his wife, etc. He is truly a remarkable man. It saddens me that he had to turn down the parts of Gandalf and Dumbledor, due to his bad health, as he would have been perfect in both of them. I am very glad for his part in Braveheart, however, especially considering that before this he had spent much of the early 90s in a coma! Mel Gibson wanted McGoohan in the film as he is also a great Prisoner fan, and even (supposedly) toyed with the idea of helping McGoohan make the film version, playing No. 6 himself. Though I simply cannot think of any other actor who could "become" No. 6 (the role being a pure expression of McGoohan's rare personality), Gibson is about as good of a choice as one could make given the current options. In fact, AMC is currently toying with remaking the entire series, and guess what their greatest obstacle reportedly is? Surprise, surprise: they simply can't find anyone who can pull the role off. The actor would almost have to share McGoohan's convictions to be able to do it, becoming almost an embodiment of pure defiance and anger. The Prisoner is, after all, the single greatest showdown of the individual vs. the collective ever put to film, in my book trumping even The Fountainhead, Bullitt, and Enemy of the People (though Ibsen profoundly influenced McGoohan).
Interestingly, McGoohan and fellow Prisoner star Alexis Kanner later made a film together. Like much of McGoohan's film work, it's not available on DVD (which here is an absolute shame given that 1: McGoohan is one of the best actors alive and 2: this film is simply brilliant.) It's called Kings and Desperate Men, and has many of the same elements that The Prisoner contained. I've always been shocked that Prisoner fans haven't rallied for this film to be released on DVD. Perhaps they've never heard of it. In it, McGoohan's character is taken prisoner (literally) by a group of idealistic youthful liberal misfits. He laughs that they think they're in control simply because they have a shotgun, and proceeds to unravel them all with his wits. His libertarian views come out here as much as in The Prisoner, as his character scoffs at the moral crusaders' silly liberal ranting, and exposes the fact that their leader really doesn't know what he's talking about, and that if what he wanted actually occurred, chaos and anarchy would result. (Now that I've brought Prisoner fans' attention to Kanner and McGoohan's followup to The Prisoner, let's see how fast all 8 copies that exist on Amazon are snatched up. If you like it, try to do something to help get this released on DVD. I've written Anchor Bay several times.)
Summary of The Prisoner - Set 3: The Schizoid Man/Many Happy Returns/It's Your Funeral
Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 04/24/2001 Run time: 156 minutes Rating: NrIt takes a Village to incarcerate The Prisoner. This set contains three mind-bending episodes from one of television's most subversive series. Number 6's (Patrick McGoohan) "strong sense of identity" is put to the ultimate test in "The Schizoid Man." You can't blame him for feeling more disoriented than usual. Everyone is addressing him as Number 12, and he is recruited by yet another new Number 2 to impersonate--you guessed it--himself. The Prisoner was really in the "Zone" (as in "Twilight") with "Many Happy Returns," in which Number 6 at last makes his escape from a seemingly deserted Village. Making his arduous way back to London, he must convince his former superiors of the Village's existence. "It's Your Funeral" finds an ever-vigilant and defiant Number 6 refusing to fall for yet another Village gambit ("I will not cooperate," he thunders). But is a threat to assassinate the outgoing Number Two for real, or is it the work of "jammers," who invent "make-believe plots" to confuse the authorities? A bonus feature of this set is an early 30-minute interview with Bernie Williams, the series' original production manager. He comments that his job was made more difficult because the show's premise was "unclear even to those who made it." This is small comfort to Prisoner devotees who parse each episode, which makes this set, of course, essential. --Donald Liebenson
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