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Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

THE PRISONER

Directed by Peter Glenville Starring Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Wilfrid Lawson 1955, English, 95 minutes, Black and White Available at Kensington Video.

Ernie: When the Cardinal is arrested by the communists, he says to his friends, "Any confession you hear about will be a lie or due to the weakness of the flesh."

Matthew: He thinks he's going to be physically tortured, as he was by the Gestapo. He's thinking about flesh in the fleshy sense.

Ernie: The unspoken thought is, "It won't be due to my human spirit, which they can't break." But they did break it in the end. His mistake was beingproud enough to think he could play the Inquisitor's game.

Matthew: He has to experience the death to self, the total self-degradation he goes through at the trial. Only then can he experience God's mercy. Before that, he's relying on himself. In solitary confinement -- and especially in the dark -- he's got nothing to distract him from himself, and he gets stripped of his self-reliance. The crucial moment comes in the courtroom, when he is told, "Throw yourself upon the mercy of the court," and he says, "No, upon the mercy of God."

* * *

Ernie: The jailer was a brilliant Common Man -- decent and pragmatic. Matthew: His worldview was so common-sensical; yet it seemed horrific in the face of the Cardinal's suffering.