#bridget boland

[movie-titlecards]

War and Peace (1956)

My rating: 6/10

I haven't read the novel, so I can't really comment on this movie's merits as an adaptation, but in itself it's pretty good - sure, it's very long, and I occasionally struggled to tell the various male protagonists apart, but it never gets too boring - and besides, it is not very often that one gets to watch one of the classic blunders being committed

[spectaculardistractions]

Towards a severe confrontation of conscience Peter Glenville's The Prisoner (1955) cautiously advances. In an iron curtain country, a Cardinal (Alec Guinness) is to be broken down by an interrogator (Jack Hawkins). One supposes that the playwright, Bridget Boland, intended an anti-Communist piece which would suggest an explanation for the successes of brainwashing (still so hard to understand, despite Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon). This, more thoughtfully than usual, would show it as a human process applied by humans, who might have ideals just as some Christian inquisitors did, and who might just as often be sensitive men. The spirit recalls Graham Greene in making every concession to cynical materialism, while somehow maintaining the Christian possibility. The inquisitor, here, is played by English gentleman, Jack Hawkins. He foregoes truth drugs and torture, and even the threat thereof, insists to his sidekick on the need to understand, respect and love one's - victim? convert? - and works on the unconscious guilts which will undermine his beliefs.

Raymond Durgnat, A Mirror for England

[mariocki]

The Prisoner (1955)

"You see, you represent a religion which provides an organisation outside the state. In your pulpit, you're more dangerous than a politician. With your war record, you're a national monument. You are outside the Party, and that monument must be -"

"Destroyed?"

"Defaced. You see? I show you my hand from the start."

"Do you want to see mine?"