The Circle Line
If there is one thing about the Prisoner series it is this, that the Prisoner is a vicious circle from which there is no escape. That the Prisoner travels in circles which is demonstrated in the episode ‘Many Happy Returns,’ as he finishes up at the very spot he started out from. That the wheels of the Penny Farthing turn in varying degrees of circles. At the end of Fall Out the Prisoner has finally come "full circle," but has learned little or nothing by the experience.
And of course there is "squaring the circle," or is it "circling the square?" Anyway whichever is shaped to fit, which takes place in the Managers office at the Labour Exchange, when the Prisoner is given a round peg to fit in a square hole. The square hole turns into a circle, meaning the village is prepared to change so as to make the Prisoner fit!
Listening to the music of Prisoner is as enjoyable as watching the series. Sometimes when I listening to the music........ I close my eyes and concentrate enough...... its' as though I'm sent back in time, and could almost actually be there. But it is imagination, mere imagination nothing more.
How often do you watch the Prisoner series, and on what format, video of DVD ? Because since the advent of the DVD have you ditched those Precision, Channel 5, MPI Home Video, and all the subsequent Prisoner releases in video box-sets?
For me, well I watch the Prisoner series once a year, it used to be twice a year once upon a time, and then the occasional episode. And on what format? Well it's generally on video, because despite the Prisoner's release on DVD and re-mastering of the 35mm prints, my favourite format is still video, and more to the point those Channel 5 video's which I began to collect back in November 1986, over twenty years ago. And what's more those Channel 5 videos still play as good today as they did the first time.
A cruel Act!
It was a cruel act wasn't it, perhaps the most cruel act of all that comes at the end of ‘The Schizoid Man.’ When No.2 asks No.6 not to forget to give his regards to Susan, and allows No.6 to get aboard the helicopter. To let the helicopter take off and make No.6 think he's got away with it, only for the helicopter to circle the village, then to land from where it took of from. That was cruel of No.2, and perhaps because of that he's the worst of them all!
That Pencil......It Doesn't Make Much Sense.................
........... Not Without The Rest Of The Scene!
The rest of the scene being that of the Triquetrum, where No.6 is using an ancient Greek device in an attempt to find out the location of the village by the measurement of the stars. This scene is of course screened in full during what fans the Prisoner have become pleased to call ‘The Alternative Chimes of Big Ben.’
"Long Lunch" No.6 says as he goes on to invite Nadia in for a night cap - drink. The trouble is as No.6 does so, he's putting a pencil in the breast pocket of his blazer after just having made a note of an astrological measurement on a sheet of paper. So the placing of the pencil is left over from a deleted scene during ‘The Chimes of Big Ben,’ which as I write, doesn't make any sense, not without the rest of the scene.
An after thought….I suppose he might have been completing the chess problem in The Tally Ho!
I'll be seeing you
Myself I don't watch the series on a regular basis. To be precise, I generally tend to neglect, no: simply to leave aside some of the episodes such as "The General" or "A. B. and C." or "Funeral" for some reason. The last complete session was in 2010 when the re-screening happened on Arte TV. After the initial screening in 1969 and the repeat of only 7 episodes in 1972 contrasting the summer Olympics in Munich there was the 1984 rerun which I missed. One mail order seller, I recall, at the time offered a VHS box set of the Prisoner (original version) for the stately amount of 150 DM. Only few could afford this. The next TV screenings came by 1989/90, then 91/92 and this time we had our own VCRs, we started to gather as much data as we could (no internet). After we found out that there were 4 more episodes somebody with access to obscur video sources was approached and we received third or fourth generation tape copies of them. Nobody would care, let alone complain about bad image quality. Also the first time ever to be listening to Patrick's original voice. But VHS tapes as the prime source weren't abolished until the DVD edition was released in 2006 which was rather belated. - BCNU!
ReplyDeleteHello Arno,
DeleteThat's an extremely interesting, and revealing comment. In recent times fans have raved about the remastering of 'the Prisoner,' the clarity of Blu-Ray, so much so as one friend of mine said "The film is so clear it's as though 'the Prisoner' was filmed onlly yesterday." I said that's the thing, it wasn't!
I recall how once upon a time fans were not bothered about the quality of the videos, they were simply happy to be able to watch the series. Remembering how excited I was when in November 1986 I purchased the first four episodes of 'the Prisoner' on two CHANNEL 5 videos. I played Arrival, Chimes, A B and C, and Free For All over, and over, and over again until the next two videos of the series were released.
Very kind regards
David
BCNU
In those days HIFI equipment such as recordplayers, amplifiers and loudspeakers were almost unaffordable to people like us. Most of us owned simple players, cassette players of modest sound quality and stocked hundreds or thousands of records. Some, however, would have very costly systems, luxury to us, of say 5000 DM - but they usually had only some 10 or 20 records. That's the difference even today. We've grown up with low-res TV, bad TV reception and blurred VHS colours. It was more important to watch the film as such. - BNCU!
ReplyDeleteHello Arno,
DeleteThank you for your continued insight. With the original screening here in Britain 1967-68, the transmission of 'the Prisoner' was in black and white. So that when I eventually got to see the series in colour, it was like watching the series for the first time. Colour added so much to the series, visually speaking of course.
Very kind regards
David
BCNU
We also used to watch in b/w, colour not before, I'd guess, 1972, 73 or so. - BCNU!
ReplyDelete