THE UNMUTUAL PRISONER ARTICLE ARCHIVE

The Big Screen Influence.

By Anthony Woodrow


The Gregory book gives an example of an echo from the big screen onto the small screen in ‘The Prisoner’. The moment in the opening sequence, when the prisoner appears in his car on this empty road, he seems to come out of nowhere. This is similar to the moment in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, when the actor, Omar Sharif, seems to appear out of nowhere, in a heat haze on a camel in the desert. At first, he seems to be a mirage. He seems to be something outside of ordinary, everyday experience. He is also travelling somewhere, as if about to enter our world from another space.


I also thought it was reminiscent of David Bowie who appears in a spaceship in the film ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ - a film which also seems to have some common ground with ‘The Prisoner’. An outsider is dumped into a society where he doesn't share the set of values of the people round him.


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