Here's just what you've been craving: Twelve minutes and 19 seconds of stopping, starting, slowing down and gabbing (I mean, breathless commentary) over the one-minute, 47-second title sequence that introduces each episode of the cult-classic 1967-68 British science-fiction / spy TV series, "The Prisoner," starring Patrick McGoohan.
I was possessed by the need to do this -- just for myself -- while (re-)watching the entire series again on DVD and becoming mesmerized by repeat viewings of the opening. It sucked me in every time. I hadn't seen the show since it aired -- on PBS? -- in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and this time I was endlessly fascinated and delighted by the sheer sixties-ness of it all -- the camera set-ups, optical gimmicks (zooms galore) and cutting techniques that epitomized the era.
Do you want more information about "The Prisoner"...?
A former (?) espionage agent (McGoohan, following up on his stint as the title character in the show "Danger Man," or "Secret Agent" in the U.S.) is kidnapped and taken to an eerie pastoral village where everyone is mysteriously cheerful (in a Stepford-like way)... and under constant surveillance. He is Number Six, and he is a tough nut to crack. As he insists every week: "I am not a number! I am a free man!" Only he's not, because he's being held prisoner in this pastoral Victorian / "Alice In Wonderland" lunatic asylum (offering plenty of opportunities for zany satire of the world at large), where in each installemnt a new Number Two tries to coerce or trick him into divulging certain... information.
I put this together for my own amusement (and as practice for future projects), but I really got into it, as you will see, and enjoyed myself immensely. I'm not even a very knowledgeable "Prisoner" geek, although I did check out the most prominent of many fan sites, "Six of One: The Prisoner Appreciation Society" which tempted me to geek out almost as much as I did over "Twin Peaks."
Word is that Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen are starring in a six-part television remake of "The Prisoner," which has its own teaser site here: "Seek the Six." Be patient. It takes a while to "initialize." After that, I couldn't tell you what the hell is happening.
Oh, and that white blob, the signature image of "The Prisoner," is some kind of roving surveillance device. Nicknamed Rover.
Enjoy. Be seeing you.
Reportedly, Universal Pictures has a deal with Christopher Nolan to adapt the series to screen. And if that wasn't a decent enough kick for me, the screenwriters are the husband-wife team, the Peoples (David and Janet).
I'm not sure if the deal is sealed, and if it is, I guess it is something we ought to look forward to.
Not that you need it, but I wanted to encourage your current obsession with this great show. I enjoy a show that has so many layers as to never get boring. Thank you for taking the time to share this endeavor. The question for me is Who is Number 1?
MSW: And the answer, inevitably, is: "You are Number Six."
MSW: And the answer, inevitably, is: "You are Number Six."
Jim, that was totally groovy! I first saw The Prisoner when I got the box set a few years ago. I was completely fascinated. Definitely time for a revisit. But please tell me they're NOT ruining it with a movie. Aaargh!
Jim Emerson: "You are, Number Six."
Great post! I love this stuff. I've never seen The Prisoner, and I doubt I would enjoy it, but well-done close readings like this are always enjoyable.
MSW: It's all in the punctuation...
Here are some of my comments on that great opening sequence:
1) I love the fact that his car can go under the bar, and it's very telling ("that would be telling"?) that he nevertheless pays.
2) I also love the "Way Out" sign (which of course is used in place of "Exit" in the UK). The movie Scorpio also uses a "Way Out" sign symbolically in its final scene.
3) I like how his fist-pound smashes the very bottom saucer, but not the one above it or the cup. Incidentally, I believe the guy in the office is series co-creator George Markstein.
4) The sequence with the filing cabinet reminds me of Orson Welles' "The Trial." (Welles, of course, discovered McGoohan, casting him in his famous stage version of "Moby Dick," though I don't think he was a fan of "The Prisoner.")
I will close with a link to perhaps the greatest piece of Prisoner geekery ever penned:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/25752
I was made aware of this show when I heard Iron Maiden's tribute on the Number of the Beast album. The interrogation scene(s) opens the song. Much later, I finally got to see it go to whoa, and I think a modern remake is a great idea.
If there was ever a concept that wanted a careful polish, it's this.
Then, there's it's obvious relevance.
The Bond-Under-Glass situation is classic, and I'm sure that everyone could really relate to it, in one way or another.
And an update on the tech, if not the technique, would enhance it for sure.
But I hope it stays British.
And that they use the song.
Interestingly enough, it was actually on CBS. It's hard to believe that could have been on a commercial network, especially when there were only three, but it's true. I guess Secret Agent was a hit for CBS, so I don't think they knew what they were getting into when they signed up for the new Patrick MacGoohan show.
I saw the show in the late 80's when they were running it late night on CBS. They used to air their back catalog since they didn't have any late night shows. And in the middle of the series, they just stopped showing it. I never knew how it ended or had any hope of seeing it again until it came out on DVD.
And another random CBS note: They didn't run the western episode. Allegedly because of the drug use, but the other episodes had plenty of drugs. I think some exec must have thought it was an attack on American culture.
Anyway...
Be seeing you...
In the final episode, it was revealed that Number 1 was the butler, the little guy in the background who never said anything.
The credit sequence is the best / most cinematic part of the entire series, although the last two episodes come close. When I showed it to my wife the first time, she said "what have I gotten myself into?" I was hoping that the episodes themselves would be cut, scored, and directed with the same brilliant inanity, and was kind of disappointed when they revealed themselves to be, for the most part, visually little different from other shows of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. But I suppose TV budgets don't allow for dozens of camera set-ups, weeks in editing, and extensive scoring, when recycling music, footage, camera set-ups, and editing patterns week-after-week is so much cheaper.
Fascinating critique , Jim. This was always one of my favorite shows and it definitely is one show that can have just about as many interpretations as the Bible does... it must have fried Mc's mind to do the series , because he never seemed all to be all there after that - always off-kilter (perhaps a 60"s Christopher Walken..)
I haven't seen this show either, but I'm pleased that you chose to dissect its opening nonetheless. It provided a technicolor backdrop for you to lay down your ideas against. I especially enjoyed your observation of how McGoohan commands space in certain shots. That seems true of SO many secret agent movies and such that I've seen. He's a man apart- the kind of guy I idolized as a kid (when I was seduced by sleek cars and good looks), and now pity and shy away from as an adult. His isolation from society is no longer appealing, most likely because I know it too well. I get all of the solitude and none of the action.
Jim - lovely analysis. Anyone who has been seduced into The Prisoner has seen that double intro so many times, and is as familiar with the sequence as a favorite album. Yet I never, ever skipped it, even when watching the series for the third time. The shots are hypnotic, ritualistic. I only hope Nolan recreates some of them.
Also, you must have come across this old amazing quicktime VR of the apartment block/village in present day...
http://members.aol.com/irabiz/village.mov
Excellent. One only hopes that you will go on to discuss some of the episodes (not to mention the construction of the Penny Farthing bicycle).
Noteworthy: George Markstein, McGoohan's partner in crime (and Script Editor), is the bald man with the "interest in the world" as you put it. And they ended up arguing at length (with thunder roaring in the background, one hopes) about the direction for the show's last episode. Life imitates art?
Also interesting - in the example you used, McGoohan credits himself as writer and director. But in more than one instance, he used the silly pseudonym "Paddy Fitz" to get around Union regulations on credits or some such. This seems even more an example of not being able to trust everything you're presented with this show!
These opening credits are so subtle and beautiful that the small ways that later episodes deviate from them ('Fallout' and 'Living in Harmony' spring to mind) are loaded with meaning.
Television doesn't get better than this unless Omar is in it.
And all of a sudden, you have a voice! Great video!
Jim, this is something that was pointed out to me - speaking of foreshadowing, have you noticed that the two doors exiting from the parking garage (or "car park", as the Brits say) are marked WAY and OUT? Quite Sixties, that, although the terms are/may have been in actual use. Like MAX. HEADROOM and PED XING, which were character names in the Max Headroom film and TV show.
Le Ted: I feel you. I went right from "The Prisoner" into the third season of "The Wire." Now I'm in the middle of the fourth (with new episodes of Simon & Burns' "Generation Kill" sprinkled in-between), and Omar gets cooler every ep. Especially when he mixes it up with a little Spanish.
Steve: Right you are! Those doors (WAY / OUT) are just like the arrows to and from the garage -- I mean, car park. And yet, for Number Six, there is No. Way. Out. The show itself, however, is way, WAY out...
Wonderful Jim! The Prisoner is one of my favorite TV shows of all time and I really enjoyed this.
Thought of Cinebeats while I was making this, Kimberly! Glad you grooved on it.
Thought of Cinebeats while I was making this, Kimberly! Glad you grooved on it.
I bought the DVD set this year when Amazon was selling it for $50 off. It was great because there were a few of the middle episodes I'd never seen before, even though I had read about them before -- "Living In Harmony" was surprisingly powerful to me.
The facts that previous commenters had brought up are of course all in the DVD extras and booklet, including how Markstein and McGoohan had a Fall Out after the first series of episodes. It struck me how amazing it was this series got made in the first place, and how driven McGoohan was to get this thing made by hook or by crook. When you look at McGoohan's career credits, I can't understand why he didn't have more success after "Danger Man" and "Prisoner." Yes, he won an Emmy for one of his several guest roles in a "Columbo" TV movie, and yes he was King Edward Longshanks in "Braveheart" and Judge Omar Noose in "A Time To Kill," but it always seemed sad to me that he didn't enjoy greater acclaim beyond cult status. Somehow, though, I don't think he was ever very concerned about that fact.
Plus, this show has the greatest TV theme song ever written.
RE: Seek The Six.
You need to find the right pics - all involving six, the fishbowl for example - then you get a pic of Caviezel, followed by McKellen, with a link to the production blogs.
Exciting stuff!
Notice the response to the question "Who is number one?" The delivery is interesting. It can sound like "You are number six." Or it can sound like "You are, number six."
Love it.
Jim, I started watching the clip before reading the entry and just assumed that this was someone else's clip. Firstly because I wasn't aware of your interest in the series and secondly because your voice is nothing like what I would have imagined it to be. I'm not sure exactly what I would have imagined in its place, something more unusual I guess. I've watched the clip two more times with the knowledge that it was your voice and it has help to cement the association. I think it's pretty damn cool to here what you sound like even if it initially threw me off.
Which of course goes right along with the ambiguous ending. John, I don't recall the point where the butler is revealed as #1. What I remember is 6 confronting a masked figure with a big 1 on the front of his white robe. 6 tears off the figure's mask to reveal a grinning gorilla mask. He tears that mask off to reveal what looks very much like his own face, laughing crazily...though it's expertly edited so things are blurry and not 100% certain.
Concerned Citizen, he's great in "Escape from Alcatraz" if you haven't seen it yet.
Best anecdote:
Set of Scanners. McGoohan was a drunk. McGoohan to Cronenberg: "You know, if I didn't drink I think I'd kill someone." Cronenberg to McGoohan: "Well then, keep drinking."
Seek The Six is basically a puzzle. You have to find the images that represent the number 6. If you solve the puzzle and submit your email, you're assigned a number.
He's brilliant in Scanners.
Excellent work, saw the show at a very young age and always loved that intro for its wordless, compact narrative. And I guess Ive had a special connection to the programme since childhood as I had many family holidays at the resort where it was all shot - Port Meirion. We would rent out one of the little cottages (usually 'Mermaid Cottage') slap bang in the middle of the place and take in sights like human-chess played on the lawn, penny-farthings and blazers and giant white 'Rovers' occasionally on the beach. I love the kaleidoscope of influences in the architecture there, it reminds me of Kanes Xanadu. And when the day tourist crowds leave in the evening, the place took on a melancholic and spooky air. The last time we went was around 1990 (I was 11) and I remember staying up to watch Death Wish on the TV and spending the days reading Blattys 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane'!
Wonderful stuff. I watched this obsessively when it was first run on CBS back in the sixties ("when the city of Atlantis ruled serene above the sea"--Cream), and found it just as fascinating when I got the DVD about 7 years ago.
I believe the late great Thomas M. Disch was involved with some of the writing under a pseudoynm. And he wrote the first of three novels based on the show.
It never occurred to me that No. 6 was running away immediately after resigning. It seemed to me that he was anticipating a well-deserved vacation. Now you've given me something new to think about.
Plus, what was No. 6 so table-slammin' angry about? I'll toy with your observation about South Africa for awhile.
In the post-9/11 world, this series is prophetic in ways its creator could never have imagined. The newspaper stills you can read on the DVD could have been penned in the early days of John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act.
As Concerned Citizen points out, it's a shame nobody ever again gave Patrick McGoohan a bunch of $$$ to make whatever he wanted. I doubt anybody in TV had ever before had such creative freedom. Maybe never since.
Curious that it was being shot around the same time and place as Kubrick's "2001." What was in the water, I wonder? : )
Why do you think the sought-after information is the reason he resigned? Admittedly my memories of the series are fuzzy, but I don't recall that it suggested any such thing.
Tim: Every week, the goal of the new Number Two is to interrogate Number Six with the question: "Why did you resign?" They try to coerce him into confessing the reason, and they try going into his memories to see if they can discover it. Spoiler warning: There is evidence (as I imply over the freeze-frame of the desert island photo), that "The Village" was, in fact, a concept that Number Six had originally proposed -- but simply as a Witness Protection Program-type retirement place for ex-agents where they would be safe from the clutches of other countries' spy agencies. When he finds out they've put it into effect, and made it into a surveillance prison, he resigns. And he may be setting out to find the place (which he envisioned as a remote island paradise), or perhaps he knows that he himself will be taken there. At any rate, his goal once he's there is not just to escape, but to find out as much as he can about the place...
Here's one of those interesting little factoids you might like: that penultimate shot of him shaking and the blinds falling (the shot right before he falls back on the bed) is actually taken from the take where he looks at the Village for the first time and reacts.
Watch it again.
It looks different from the scene of him looking at the (superimposed) skyscrapers, but it's just like the CU of him, after opening the blinds, looking at "the Village" that is used after the credits. So the full shot was....CU of him looking at the Village, getting angry, blinds come down.
By the way, The Village is a resort in Wales (Portmeirion) that you can visit, and No. 6's apartment...is the gift shop. As I'm typing this I'm looking at a No. 6 shield coaster a friend picked up for me there.
And the butler was NOT No. 1. Anyone who suggests that...well, they're #2!
Add this to your "Prisoner" geek file:
The groovy sound made by doors in the prison village are used again in Ripley's appartment at the beginning of "Aliens."
Just thought you needed to know.
If I were remaking it, I'd try to get Jennifer Garner, not just because of "Alias" (though that's a big reason) but to give it a gender flop.
Favorite episode is still "Free For All", I think. Rarely does- literally- political science fiction work as well. I hope it goes over well with people in that field too (unlike the way most physics fiction makes physicists roll their eyes).
It's always been my understanding that Johnny Rivers's "Secret Agent Man" theme song was only heard in the USA; the actual theme of the hour-long SECRET AGENT series was that super-fast harpsichord number that played under the opening credits of each episode. I've seen some episodes in syndication that don't have the Rivers song at all, but begin instead with a portrait still of McGoohan breaking up into a kind of circular puzzle; the titles read "Patrick McGoohan as the SECRET AGENT." Episode credits over the harpsichord; End credits play over the full number. I mention this by way of pointing out that SECRET AGENT's harpsichord theme and THE PRISONER theme are played at the same fast tempo; the latter seems like a slightly discordant variant version of the former. (Well, it seems tha way to me, anyway.) Track it down if you can and hear for yourself. Be hearing from you...
The Prisoner is easily in top 3 favourite shows of all time, including other erstwhile and worthwhile Brit-series Monty Python and The Sandbaggers.
Sad news is (maybe) that AMC has optioned the rights to the show and are looking at Jim Caviezel as 6 and Ian McKellen as no.2
Variety Article
After about a minute or so of googlage I found that the original Danger Man theme (the harpsichord tune) was composed by Edwin Astley, who also did the theme for Roger Moore's The Saint series. The Prisoner theme, of course, was by the legendary Ron Grainer, who in the '60s was sort of the Henry Mancini of British TV. Producers would line up for a chance at a Grainer tune because he was just so good at picking up on -- well -- the theme of the program and dishing up a good hooky tune that would get you out of the kitchen and in front of telly. A musical chameleon; he wrote for everything from The Prisoner to The Duke and Mrs Simpson to Doctor Who.
Jim, where did you get the idea that McGoohan's character came up with the Village? He seems rather perplexed when he wakes up there and asks "what is the place?" several times in "Arrival." If he knew about it, he wouldn't need to ask.
The series does, as far as I'm concerned, answers the question of "Why did you resign?" during "Once Upon A Time" and ironically, McKern's Number 2 misses it thanks to the effects of the Degree Absolute process.
Joe: I read (somewhere) that this was explored in an unshot script, and I thought it was interesting so I thought I'd throw it out as a possibility. The idea was that McGoohan's character had proposed this idea of a retirement village to keep former agents safe. Then he found out that his superiors had taken that idea and turned it into a prison under constant surveillance instead. In this scenario, when he resigns he knows they will try to send him there. If he can escape (which he does in one episode) he can blow the cover on the whole operation, which (of course) he feels guilty about unwittingly having some role in creating. Just one of many possibilities. Another is that he has some idea of where it is and plans to go looking for it, but they kidnap him first...
Hmmm... I did pick remaindered copies of the script books up at one point, but haven't looked through them yet. That really doesn't seem consistant with any of the filmed episodes though.
Every week, the goal of the new Number Two is to interrogate Number Six with the question: "Why did you resign?"
As I said, my memories of the series are fuzzy. But this explanation seems much too pat. The question of Number Six's resignation always felt more like an opening gambit than a goal in itself. It seems as though "The Village" is really after something else, something which is never really specified. (DARK CITY owes much to THE PRISONER.)
The main thing I remember about THE PRISONER is that it's rather like a jigsaw puzzle in which none of the pieces fit.
I was saddened of the passing of Patrick McGoohan on January 13, 2009. I have paid attention to his career ever since his Prisoner endeavor. I smiled even when he reprised his role as "number six" to a small degree in The Simpsons. Sometime in 2009, new episodes of The Prisoner will be released. I always thought if any actor should play number six today it should be an actress. Otherwise, it will be an interesting see later this year.