The Prisoner (1963 film)

The Prisoner
At from The Age 14 Nov 1962
Written byWilliam Sterling
Directed byWilliam Sterling
StarringCampbell Copelin
Country of originAustralia
Original languageEnglish
Production
Production companyABC
Original release
NetworkABC
Release14 November 1962 (1962-11-14) (Melbourne)[1]
Release1 May 1963 (1963-05-01)

The Prisoner is a 1962 Australian television play based on a play which had been filmed with Alec Guinness.[2] Many Australian TV dramas at the time were based on overseas stories.[3]

Cast

  • Christopher Hill as the interrogator
  • Michael Duffield as the prisoner
  • John Gray as the cell warden

Production

Sterling aimed to recreate prison through the mind of a prisoner.[1]

Reception

The critic from the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that, "no thumb-screw or rack could have seemed more incredible than did the weapons in the verbal armoury of the interrogator, played so as to be fairly obviously diabolical by Christopher Hill... The camera circled and shifted as ominously as the dialogue; the shadows and lights of William Sterling's production accentuated the probing nightmare; but in the end one was not quite sure how it all had happened."[4]

The Bulletin thought it was "stronger than the motion picture in many ways."[5]

References

  1. ^ a b "The Prisoner: Study in Brainwashing". The Age. 8 November 1962. p. 16.
  2. ^ "Famous Play Tonight". The Canberra Times. Vol. 37, no. 10, 524. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 1 May 1963. p. 33. Retrieved 15 February 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ Vagg, Stephen (18 February 2019). "60 Australian TV Plays of the 1950s & '60s". Filmink.
  4. ^ "Prisoner On TV". Sydney Morning Herald. 2 May 1963. p. 8.
  5. ^ "Where Are the Writers". The Bulletin. 11 May 1963. p. 33.
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