The realisation occurred that a cardinal sin had been comitted. The entire investment of energy had been focused to produce a product of extraordinarily high quality, even embracing the production detail of adopting the Albertus typeface, destined forever represent, and symbolise the series. The sin? In the euphoria of creativity, a conclusion had not been fomulated. If "Once Upon A Time" is a minimalist
psychological drama, based upon a blend of McGoohan's life experiences and Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man", "Fall Out" is a sprawling, unstructured, breathtaking display of ideas that ensures the seal as the classic TV series. Never before and never again would the product of one overworked, brilliantly creative and single-minded man have the opportunity of assaulting an unsuspecting audience, without regard for convention or expectation.
DIESER TEXT AUF DEUTSCH
Both "Once Upon A Time" and "Fall Out" were conceived and scripted by McGoohan, the latter in a 36 hours burst when the actor was in a state of exhaustion. "Once Upon A Time" signalled McGoohan's intent.
He had ideas and nothing was going to stop him expressing them. Both episodes are riveting, exhausting pieces but for entirely different reasons. "Once Upon A Time" is claustrophobic, revealing, based upon psychological principles, edge of the seat stuff, with McGoohan and McKern locked in a intense, to the death, battle of wills. The episode (apparently performed on stage to compliment Beckett's End Game) reaches its climax as Number Two mentally, emotionally and physically crumbles. Defeated, in the final seconds, Two and Six exchange roles, and "Die Six" symbolises the final test overcome, Number Six' ultimate triumph, the persona of Six is shed, and Number Two, adopting this persona, loses the titanic struggle and dies' and with that act, the Village, Markstein's structure and reason all concede defeat.
McGoohan, through necessity, time and design threw down the gauntlet with "Fall Out". An expectant audience, awaiting answers to the growing number of puzzles and questions posed in the previous sixteen episodes, found themselves presented with even more questions. The episode "bit the hand" that fed it. Without a conventional plot "Fall Out" is confused and confusing, undisciplined as well as a triumph of surrealism. The madness and kaleidoscope of ideas breathed new and future life into this most enigmatic series, forcing the viewer to re-evaluate all that has gone before.
EPISODENWÜRDIGUNG: FALL OUT (D)
APPRECIATIVE EXAMINATON: FALL OUT (E)
CHRIS RODLEY ÜBER SIX INTO ONE: THE PRISONER FILE
DAVE BARRIE: I'M INDEPENDENT, DON'T FORGET
DAVE BARRIE: DIE ANKLAGE: DUNKLE TRÄUME...
On the surface the theme is about revolt, presenting three specific cases. Behind this, the episode is awash with allegory and symbolism. Pointing to far deeper meanings on a psychological level are the three main characters Numbers Two, Six and 48, all aspects of the same personality? Perhaps the delegates are also other aspects? In Jungian psychology is this the re-integration of this personality through a traumatic recognition of these aspects? As "Fall Out" Opens, a voice intones: "We thought you would be happier as yourself," as he finds himself, his identity (previously stripped from him in "Dance Of The Dead" perhaps?). The scene is a room full of coat hangers, symbols of previous seekers who have passed this way I wonder (incidentally the coat hanger is a theme McGoohan retumed to in the "L.A. Tape"). In "Fall Out" three aspects need to be resolved. They are:
1. The Prisoner's personal inner world.
2. The aspect of political principle and argument.
3. The 'real' outside external world.
Looked at on various levels "Fall Out" could be interpreted as a dream/nervous breakdown/near death experience/Tibetan Bardo/thoughts as he drives to hand in his resignation and, of course, an allegory. When pressed McGoohan admits to the latter. READ ON...
If "Fall Out" is to be understood we have to examine the inspirational force that created THE PRISONER. And if THE PRISONER divides the viewing audience into two camps -
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM:
ONE MAN'S ATTEMPT TO REACH THE UNREACHABLE STAR
those that think it the most thought-provoking and extraordinary television series of all time, and those who wonder what all the fuss is about - then "Fall Out" emphatically emphasises this division.
DIESER ARTIKEL AUF DEUTSCH
Back in 1967 this television experiment created a mixture of feelings from the audience, all of whom were waiting for the series to reach a conclusion so that everybody could find out what it was all about. Then "Fall Out" burst upon the scene and the mass reaction is well documented. Indeed it is probably this episode more than any other that has guaranteed THE PRISONER its longevity.
Where were the answers that had been promised?
That
was the cry, and McGoohan disappeared
into hiding having effectively alienated
those that had thought him so watchable
in DANGER MAN. When he re-emerged his
career was launched into a different direction. No longer would he be a leading man but a character actor. The stardom that he had seemed headed for had been sacrificed to an idea that had burnt bright within him, to which, with Lord Grade's money, he made celluloid reality and assaulted the viewing public.
As he has revealed the idea of "the individual against bureaucracy" had been in McGoohan's mind from a very early age. As an actor his star was in the ascendant. However here was no matinee idol, here was a man with certain principles, ideals even.
How must he have felt when he poured his soul into the creation of "Brand" at the Lyric, Hammersmith, and was acclaimed by those in the know for this, yet failed to take the play to the West End? The public acclamation came for DANGER MAN, a TV series, albeit a superior one. Then, trapped by his own success and wishing to stretch himself, he bargained with Sir Lew to do something - something so crazy that it had no model and was to be without peer.
It began well enough, although George Markstein came up with the basic premise, it was McGoohan who saw the potential, immediately taking it off in his direction, a move that would leave Markstein increasingly bitter.
McGoohan's creativity was much in evidence in those rosy early days writing "Free For All" as Markstein and Tomblin were hammering away at "Arrival". When the latter was finished McGoohan took it and made a number of changes and additions. As the series began its arduous shooting schedule McGoohan found himself taking more and more on. Adding or rewriting scenes in episodes became the norm and the pages of "Once Upon A Time" flowed from his pen on a daily basis as the episode was being filmed. Clearly this could not go on - no human can take this sort of pressure for any great length of time - yet it had to. The dream that McGoohan was making reality was rapidly turning into an all consuming monster.
Along the way, at first of no consequence, but growing nightmarishly week by week, was the growing realisation that a cardinal sin had been committed - there was no ending. As Lord Grade said in the 1984 documentary, "SIX INTO ONE: The Prisoner File", when he was being asked by the networks about the series conclusion: "Patrick came to me and said 'I've got too lost, I have no ending', and I thought it very big of him to say that. So I told the networks, we have no ending". I told Tony Sloman about this and Tony said to me "And what do you think the networks would have said to that?
So it was that McGoohan - exhausted, and possibly disappointed by the reaction of what had become his brainchild - had to sit down and write a conclusion.
When I interviewed Tony Sloman Tony had some firm views on this. He felt that, for McGoohan, the series concluded with "Once Upon A Time" and that therefore "Fall Out" was the ending that was "expected", that is, going out with all guns blazing - the Hollywood "big bang" finale. (Alexis Kanner to McGoohan as they wielded the machine guns: "I thought we were making a pacifist message here?" "Ironic isn't if," was the retort).
If you follow this line of reasoning then it is easy to see "Fall Out" not as an earnest last-throw-of-the- idealist's-dice but as the product of a saddened, slightly embittered creator who is coerced into doing somethmg against his principles. If this is the case then how did McGoohan come up with the "Fall Out" script, as he did, in those famous 36 hours?
"Fall Out" does not have a conventional plot, it is a series of scenes. Alexis Kanner relates the story of McGoohan saying to him of a Hollywood producer who had flown over for a meeting with McGoohan, "His hip bone ain't connected to his thigh bone the way yours and mine is... " Kenneth Griffith tells of writing his own speech. It would seem that, in the dying days of McGoohan's enthusiasm and belief in the project that now dominated his life, he snatched at, and melded into the most anarchic, radical and adventurous TV script any ideas that echoed his values.
They might have come from a chance remark or have been torn out of his unconscious. McGoohan, the idealist, the visionary who was driven by instinctive feelings distilled everything that could be squeezed into his final throw of the dice... and, exhausted, awaited the audience's response.
"Fall Out" took no prisoners. Confused and confusing, surreal and symbolic, ambiguous and ambitious, it exploded upon the viewing public and assaulted them like no television programme had ever done before, and probably would ever do again. As the viewers rose in indignation a bruised McGoohan was left to reflect how the act of voicing his hopes, fears, and dreams had cost him dear. "Fall Out" more than any other episode crystallised the essence of THE PRISONER's message. It sealed the series' fate in the eyes of the common man; it also ensured that this important television experiment would gain cult status and come to be regarded as a classic.
It all leaves one important unanswered question. After all the creative ideas that McGoohan injected into THE PRISONER scripts that he either wrote or embellished, why has he never produced anything since? Upon reflection, given its reception, it is entirely understandable.
Dave Barrie, "In The Village" 23/1999 |
As mentioned in the previous section, this is the episode that has been the source of much of the controversy surrounding the religious debate. "The Church? Almost impossible to do anything
ALEXIS KANNER IN "FALL OUT"
without some form of sin," says McGoohan in "Six Into One: The PRISONER File". Yet here we have (at least) the day of judgement, resurrection, temptation, Number 48 being "born all over" and "Dem Bones" ringing in our ears. One symbol, the 'be seeing you' salute has tantalised us through this series, the salute (allegedly) the sign of ihe early Christians. (Former member) Roger Goodman points out: "Even though Number Six, Number Two and Number 48 are feeling jubilant after escaping from the Village, they are still in a I cage."
BEHIND THE MASK
Up until now the identity of Number One has been a mystery to us. Beforehand it may have been conjectured that it was a political force, or human-kind in general, or abstractly, progress and 20th century technology. But now with the unrnasking of Number One it is seen as himself. Far from answering this ultimate, final question, it again throws the debate open. A school of thought maintains that Number One is God, another that it is his "inner" self, or at least, an aspect of himself. Again, if all that has happened is in Number Six' head, perhaps it is his outer "worldly" self.
Jung, the psychologist, from an early age, felt he had two parts. He even called them number 1 (the objective mind) and number 2 (the subjective mind). He observed the circle to be a symbol of oneness - those ho achieve an inner unity. Has Number Six been "going round in circles?" or (at the end of "Fall Out") has he come full circle? Again Roger Goodman points out the use of circles in THE PRISONER. The wheels of the penny farthing, Number Two's chair viewed straight on, Rover, even the cyclical nature of the series itself...
"With an apparent total disregard for television conventions of any kind... McGoohan produced Fall Out.
The result was major disruption of the Sunday viewing experience, a complete denial of audience expectation and the absolute assurance that... An Important television experiment would now achieve the reputation and cult status it had gained throughout the world." Chris Rodley
An American author, Thomas Hudson, published "The Law Of Psychic Phenomena" in 1893. He conjectured that we have two rninds. He called them the objective and the subjective. The former is the part that deals with the extemal world, that "copes"; the "realist". He said this is the part that we feel is the "us". The subjective remains hidden in shadow. It looks inward, is concerned with feelings, sensations and ernotions.
Herman Hesse, in a 1919 essay entitled "Self Will" says: "A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I hold absolutely sacred - the law in himself, his own will." McGoohan admits that Number One is an aspect of ourselves. "It was about the most evil, human essence, and that is ourselves." (excerpt from Max Hora's "The Prisoner Of Portmeirion) This, the crux of the series, the essence of all the questions, trials and tests along the labyrinethine search of the meaning of the quest, is the ultimate answer, as well as question. All roads lead to the search for the self.
WAY OUT OR WAY OUT!
But does the Prisoner escape? In "Alice Through The Looking Glass" Alice is crowned and applauded but has to resort to violence to leave that world. She leaves an eerie trial, with its judges, prisoners and shifting identities; Number Two, Number Six and Number 48 leave the Village using violence. With the strains of "All You Need Is Love" (is it?) ringing in our ears they create death and havoc. But there is no blood? Is "Fall Out" ridiculing anarchy? Is THE PRISONER a descriptive series allegorically identifying key problems with contemporary society (and ourselves)? Does it propose an agenda for action? Are we all one? Are we shown a route to freedom? Does he escape?
DAVE BARRIE: I'M INDEPENDENT, DON'T FORGET
EPISODENWÜRDIGUNG: FALL OUT (D)
APPRECIATIVE EXAMINATON: FALL OUT (E)
CHRIS RODLEY ÜBER SIX INTO ONE: THE PRISONER FILE
DAVE BARRIE: DIE ANKLAGE: DUNKLE TRÄUME...
Dieser
beitrag entstand aus der von Dave Barrie
1996 organisierten veranstaltung "The Long And Winding Road" und erschien als 601-sonderpublikation.
Dave Barrie gründete 1977 die PRISONER Appreciation Society SIX OF ONE.
|