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.