The Prisoner (1955)

Director
Peter Glenville

Main cast
Alec Guinness; Jack Hawkins; Wilfrid Lawson; Kenneth Griffith; Jeanette Sterke

Genres
Drama, Foreign

Description
A cardinal is arrested for treason against the state. As a prince of his church, and a popular hero of this people, for his resistance against the Nazis during the war and afterward his resistance when his country again fell to a totalitarian conqueror. In prison, his interrogator is determined to get a confession of guilt against the state from the strong willed man, and thus destroy his power over his people. The verbal and psychological battles are gripping and powerful - not even the increasing pressures put upon the Cardinal can force him to weaken; not even solitary confinement, continuous blazing light in his cell, sleeplessness, efforts to persuade him he is going mad. And yet, in the deepening conflict, the superb indomitable prisoner, creates a tremendous pity on his tormentor, the interrogator. Written by alfiehitchie


Similar movies

Two girls escape from an open borstal for two very different reasons; Annetta to attempt to visit her baby daughter, who is being raised in a convent; and Carol, who hopes to be recaptured and sent to a closed borstal where she knows her girlfriend Doreen is being held. Carol's plan works, although she is devastated to find that not only has Doreen found herself a new girlfriend inside (who both taunt and tease Carol), when Annetta is arrested at the convent and sent to the same closed borstal, she assumes it was Carol who "grassed" her up and proceeds to plan her revenge. Carol finds protection in the form of inmate Eddie, while Annetta's constant bullying attempts keep her in solitary confinement; however, Carol's world is turned upside-down when Eddie is released from borstal and her protection is gone... Written by Rhino
The film is a drama about the aftermath of the 1520s Spanish Conquest of Mexico told from the perspective of the indigenous Aztec people. It explores the social, religious, and psychological changes brought about by a historical process of colonization that both defined the American continent and is also highly reminiscent of today’s neocolonialism.
When he finds himself in an Hokkaido prison for a minor firearms possession offence, it doesn't take long for Hanawa (Tsutomu Yamazaki) to surrender utterly to the routine, arbitrary rules and grinding sameness of life in the prison system. Indeed, he comes to find his stint in solitary confinement, cut off from fellow-inmates and with a mechanical task of creating hundreds of folded paper bags each day, a curiously satisfying experience.
The true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.
Someone in a prison run by a corrupt warden fakes the deaths of convicts to later use them as expendable assassins. A police officer is sent into the prison to gather evidence of the corruption.
Based on Nicole Valery-Grossu's European best seller autobiographic novel "Bless you, prison", the film is a true story, with real events and characters. A young intellectual woman, Nicole, is arrested in the years of Stalinism simply for being an active member of an opposition party. There follow three months of exhausting interrogation and isolation. Alone in a cell, she undergoes a spiritual experience similar to that of the great mystics. She proceeds to an in-depth soul-searching that helps her discover the power of faith and steels her to put up resistance. Nicole goes through the ordeal of communist prisons, conflicts and risky activities, and manages to provide a heartening example for the other inmates. Daily prison life is not drab but full of unexpected happenings like a story.
Emanuelle, a reporter, comes just a little too close to exposing a corrupt official, and is sent to prison on trumped-up charges. In the prison, the inmates are constantly humiliated and tortured by the prison staff. Overly affectionate prisoners are forced underwater, while others are obliged to look on. Emanuelle finds an enemy in the deranged Albina, who "runs the prison." For the pleasure of the warden, Emanuelle and Albina are forced to fight each other with knives. Bad becomes worse when four men awaiting execution escape and take over the prison. Gore flows like water.
This gripping historical drama recounts the story of Armenian-born Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian), a woodworker and political activist who led an immigrant laborer division of the Parisian Resistance on 30 operations against the Nazis in 1943. The Nazis branded the group an Army of Crime, an anti-immigrant propaganda stunt that backfired as the team's members became martyrs for the Resistance. Virginie Ledoyen co-stars as Manouchian's wife.
A Gypsy family travels the French roads during the Second World War, followed by Little Claude, a young boy seeking a new family after his parents "left and never returned". Upon reaching a town where they traditionally stop for a few months and work in vineyards, they learn that a new law forbids them from being nomadic. Theodore, the town's mayor, and Miss Lundi, the schoolteacher, protect and help the Gypsies. Despite this, They are arrested and placed in an internment camp. Theodore manages to rescue them and gives them a piece of property where they must settle. But the Gypsies' deeply ingrained thirst for freedom makes this sedentary lifestyle difficult to bear. After Theodore and Miss Lundi are arrested for resistance, the Gypsies decide they must get back on the move in order to remain free.
Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife abandons their family on the day after Christmas. His unemployment and the fact that there is no woman in the house to care for the children, Evelyn, Dermot and Maurice, make it clear to the authorities that his is an untenable situation. The Catholic Church and the Irish courts decide to put the Doyle children into Church-run orphanages.
Firaaq is an Urdu word that means both separation and quest. The film is a work of fiction, based on a thousand stories. The story is set over a 24-hour period, one month after a campaign that took place in Gujarat, India, in 2002. It traces the emotional journey of ordinary people- some who were victims, some perpetrators and some who choose to watch silently.
Footpath is a Hindi crime thriller film directed by Vikram Bhatt and released in 2003. The film stars Aftab Shivdasani, Rahul Dev, Bipasha Basu and marked the debut of Emraan Hashmi. The film failed to do well at the box office. This film is inspired by the Hollywood flick State of Grace. Arjun Singh (Aftab Shivdasani) and the Srivastav brothers, Raghu (Emraan Hashmi) and Shekhar (Rahul Dev), are neighbors in a gangster-prone area in Bombay. When Arjun's union leader father is killed, the brothers urge him to avenge his death. They get a sword and find the killers - and kill them. Arjun is the prime suspect in this homicide and the brothers get him to run to Delhi, where he begins a new life as a Real Estate Agent, Mohan Kumar Sharma
Two private bankers, Alistair and Jamie, who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a 12 hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society. Their next target is Sean Macdonald a parentless teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh. She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast. Sean agrees to play for cash.
The movie is set at the beginning of the NEP (New Economic Policy) in December, 1921. A mysterious radio message is beamed around the world, and among the engineers who receive it are Los, the hero, and his colleague Spiridonov. Los is an individualist dreamer. Aelita is the daughter of Tuskub, the ruler of a totalitarian state on Mars in which the working classe are put into cold storage when they are not needed. With a telescope, Aelita is able to watch Los. As if by telepathy, Los obsesses about being watched by her. After some hugger-mugger involving the murder of his wife and a pursuing detective, Los takes the identity of Spiridonov and builds a spaceship. With the revolutionary Gusev, he travels to Mars, but the Earthlings and Aelita are thrown into prison by the dictator. Gusev and Los begin a proletarian uprising, and Aelita offers to lead.
In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.
A struggling actor comes from Delhi to Bombay and enters the Hindi film industry. This gives the audience an in sight into what sometimes happens when making a movie and what happens in the industry and more when it involves the opposite sex and when you are working together. Zoya Akhtar, sister to Farhan Akhtar and daughter of Javed Akhtar, has done a superb job in her directorial debut in showin
Uday (Siddharth), is a rich kid who becomes chairman of a company following the death of his father. He believes in the adage of life is short and carpe diem. At New Year's Party 2007, he spies on a girl called Sandhya (Shamili) in a salwar-kameez, writing a diary at the pub. Through a series of searches with his friend "Fatso" (Krishnudu), he ends up discovering that Sandhya lives alone at a beach side house and runs a nursery. She is very traditional with her own ideals. He enters in her house on a pretense as a Paying Guest to make her fall in love with him. After a series of attempts to woo Sandhya, Uday eventually succeeds and presents her with 12 gifts on her birthday, the last being Uday himself.
This lovely, 1991 adaptation of Elizabeth Von Arnim's novel has a superb cast and a tone so mellow you can feel your pulse get slower. Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson play a pair of unhappily married women who rent an Italian villa for a month, sharing the rent with a crusty Englishwoman (Joan Plowright) and a lonely aristocrat (Polly Walker). Sun, rest, sinking into the green grass for long naps--they all have a soulful effect on the quartet, and then on the men in their lives who make a surprise visit. Mike Newell (Into the West) directs with seeming effortlessness, and it is impossible not to be swayed by the promise of restoration for these burdened characters--or for anyone alive. Wonderful performances all around, including a particularly sensitive one by Alfred Molina and a very funny one by Jim Broadbent.
Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on wrongful conviction of murder. Jailed shortly before the Bulgarian communist coup of 1944, he now finds himself in a new and alien world - the totalitarian Sofia of the 60s. His first night of freedom draws the map of a diabolical city full of decaying neighborhoods, gloomy streets and a bizarre parade of characters.
For 15 years, Adam Curtis has concentrated on a cultural history behind the politics of the 20th century and beyond. In 1992, he made Pandora’s Box, six “fables” on the consequences (often dangerous) of political and technocratic rationality, especially when used to crush common sense and a clear reporting of the facts. Nothing concerns Curtis more than the way public relations and spin doctoring have become ways of masking the true nature of modern history - and nothing is so vital to the new forms of modern bureaucratic totalitarianism, the dulcet “order” that has come to fill the ground left by fascism and communism. In other words, the “enlightened” problem solving favored in the most advanced countries, but employed to obfuscate democratic impulses.
The Yangs are betrayed by a government official conspiring with the Mongols. All of the Yang family males except the 4th, 5th, and 6th brothers are killed. Fu Sheng loses his mind after the death of his family, while the other brother, takes refuge in a temple. Liu's superb martial arts skill, impress the temple's senior monks. He learns that his sister has been captured by the conspirators.
A young peasant boy who is bullied by local noblemen seeks to learn drunken boxing from the head of a local martial arts school. When the boy beats up his previous tormentors, the nobles patriarch challenges the boys teacher, the drunken master, who defeats the lot of them. Embarrased, the nobles retain two hired snake style killers. They kill everyone except the peasant boy.
Maanav is a struggling filmmaker who will not compromise on the script he has written. His girlfriend Ruchi, a successful film editor, arranges for him to meet film producer Nitin, who is not very convinced about Maanav's script. Maanav then suggests four stories on infidelity, woven together by a common story. The film itself echoes this structure, with four stories mingling with the main narrative
Zé is a very poor man from the Brazilian countryside. His most prized possession is his donkey. When his donkey falls terminally ill, Zé makes a promise to Saint Bárbara: If his donkey recovers, he will carry a cross - like Jesus - all the way from his city to Saint Bárbara's church in the state capital. Upon the recover of his donkey, Zé leaves on his journey. He makes it to the church, but the priest refuses to accept the cross once he came to know the context of Zé's promise. Written by Manoel Mendonça
Housewife, 49 was a 2006 television drama based on the wartime diaries of Nella Last. Written by and starring English actress and comedian Victoria Wood, it follows the experiences of an ordinary housewife and mother in the Northern English town of Barrow-in-Furness during World War II. It was first broadcast in the UK by ITV on 10 November 2006
Orchestra Rehearsal (Italian: Prova d'orchestra) is a 1978 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini. It follows an Italian orchestra as the members go on strike against the conductor. The film was shown out of competition at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. Considered by some to be underrated Orchestra Rehearsal was the last collaboration between composer Nino Rota and Fellini, due to Rota's death in 1979.
Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.
Kishanlal marries the beautiful Lachchi, but the day after the wedding, he leaves on business for five years. When Kishanlal reappears only a few days later, Lachchi is delighted, but this new Kishanlal is in fact a spirit who has taken the form of Lachchi's husband, after having seen her by chance and fallen in love with her. Four years later, the real Kishanlal returns and the townsfolk must determine who is who.
At a Catholic public school, Benjamin Stanfield is tired of being the teacher's pet and decides to play a practical joke on his form master Father Goddard. In confession, Stanfield tells Goddard that he has accidentally murdered his friend Blakey and buried him in the forest. When Goddard investigates the matter, he finds a buried scarecrow. Goddard is outraged, but, due to the seal of confession, he knows he cannot expel Stanfield. Shortly after, Stanfield once again enters the confession booth, telling Goddard that what before was a practical joke, he has now made happen. In disbelief, Goddard once again goes to the forest to investigate the matter. This time, he discovers Blakey's dead body. The plot soon thickens as Stanfield's fellow student Arthur Dyson mysteriously disappears...
The end of the 19th century. A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm. Among them are Lasse and his son Pelle who move to Denmark to find work. They find employment at a large farm, but are treated as the lowest form of life. Pelle starts to speak Danish but is still harassed as a foreigner. But none of them wants to give up their dream of finding a better life than the life they left in Sweden.
Ramlal Sharma lives a poor life-style with two sons Ratanlal Sharma and Sanjaylal Sharma. Both sons attend Model School for the poorer folks. Rantanlal excels at everything he does including his studies and outdoor activities while Sanjaylal is a no good slacker who loves to enjoy himself with his friends and have everything done without any hard work. Both sons run a small café providing eatable
Two corporate giants compete in order to recklessly maximize their respective profits.
Aditya Singh, fondly called Adi Chachu by the children of his brother, lives in a large mansion in Mumbai with his brother, sister-in-law, sister and grandmother. He is the only one working in the family. He falls in love with a local teacher, Priya. They confess their feelings to each other and plan a wedding. However, before the wedding day Adi is run over by a truck to save Parth and dies. In afterlife, he meets The Hindu God of Death, Yamraj, a kind-hearted, emotional deity with designer clothes and an red old car. Yamraj allows Adi to go back to Earth as a ghost to stop his evil uncle who wants to sell Adi's mansion to industrialist Hirachand. Adi enlists the aid of Shakti, a little boy, in order to save his family home.
The aging Caesar finds himself intrigued by the young Egyptian queen. Adapted by George Bernard Shaw from his own play.
The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their country's cause.
Celebrated Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Mother Joan of the Angels, Night Train) helmed this conspiracy thriller. Exhibiting tremendous influence by Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, it begins with the fact of a dead man's homicide, and then jumps back in time to present three possible versions of the events leading up to his murder. This film ran headfirst into a substantial amount of political difficulty because of its dire and merciless depiction of Polish officials as universally corrupt and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, it did pick up a nod for the Golden Palm at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, losing to Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle's Le Monde du Silence.
A man gets involved in a kidnapping scheme with the wife of a wealthy businessman. She lets herself be tied up and confined in his house while he sends the ransom demand. When he returns home that night, however, he finds her laying dead on the floor. In a panic he buries her body deep in the woods and tries to return to his ordinary life. One day, he thinks he spots her walking down the street. Is his mind playing tricks on him, or has she somehow returned from the grave?
Julia, a 25 year-old university student, two weeks pregnant, with no criminal record, is sent to prison. Julia murdered the father of her child. This story addresses maternity, jail and Justice; confinement, guilt and solitude; but above all it deals with Julia and her son, Tomas, born inside an Argentinean prison.
This highly acclaimed feature film on Pope John Paul II was filmed on location in Italy and Poland. Focusing on the papacy of John Paul and the tremendous impact he had on the Church and the world, Karol: The Pope, The Man stars actor Piotr Adamczyk in a deeply moving portrayal of the beloved pontiff. It is the powerful true story of a charismatic spiritual leader who helped bring down Communism, renewed the life of the Church, greatly impacted youth worldwide with love for Christ, and a Pope who reached out to other religions and world leaders with a message of peace and love. Also stars Raoul Bova (Saint Francis), Michele Placido (Padre Pio: Between Heaven and Earth) and Adriana Asti as Mother Teresa. The beautiful film score is by legendary film composer Ennio Morricone.
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
The Trench tells the story of a group of young British soldiers on the eve of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, the worst defeat in British military history. Against this ill-fated backdrop, the movie depicts the soldiers' experience as a mixture of boredom, fear, panic, and restlessness, confined to a trench on the front lines.
Ustad Hotel is a quaint place run by a foodie named Kareem, who is fondly called Ustad, on a beach in Kozhikode. He sells biriyani – not to make money but to ensure that his biriyani has his customers Faizie's stay in Kozhikode continues for a bit longer than what he had anticipated and during his stay with his grandfather, Faizie unearths a real world that exists beyond the sea and its shores. The film is about the bonding between Faizi and his grandfather and how a few days with his grandfather and Ustad Hotel changes his life for ever.
Continuing the storyline of The Gathering Storm, Churchill at War is a look at the former British prime minister's life and career at the end of WWII.
After Germany invades Poland and the Nazis order the confinement of all local Jews in the ghetto, medical doctor Artur Planck (Joseph Fiennes) manages to flee with his family, seeking refuge at the farm of Emilia (Kelly Harrison), their former grocer. With the Planck family hiding in her attic, Emilia finds her feelings for the physician growing stronger than she wants, or can control -- despite the dangers of the situation.
Romanian director Cristian Nemescu's comedy California Dreamin' (aka Nesfarsit, 2007) unfolds against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, circa 1999. A NATO train rolls through a Romanian hamlet, transporting a plethora of weapons across the country -- without official documents, and equipped only with the verbal consent of the Romanian authorities. The transport thus grows intensely vulnerable.
Ranjit Mehra and his wife Sonia live a middle-class life in rural India. Ranjit's passion is studying the heavenly bodies through various computers, telescopes, and communicators as he believes there is life beyond Earth. He continuously transmits the sound generated by the syllable "om" and hopes that someone somewhere will hear this and respond to it.
A middle-aged, unemployed heroin-addict, Checkie, loiters on the Tbilisi street outside his son’s school, where he himself was once a promising student. His wife, meanwhile, struggles to pay the tuition and understand her husband’s lack of interest in the family’s survival—even as the bank repossesses their furniture. But when a group of policemen blackmails Checkie into entrapping the son of his wealthy friend, husband and wife are unified by the uncertainty of their deepening moral dilemma, and a series of worsening foul-ups, in Levan Koguashvili’s lightly humorous yet realistic drama about the fate of a generation left behind in Georgia’s post-Soviet era.
In 1914 on a family estate, Oda (Paula Beer) helps a wounded anarchist, and as their illicit friendship deepens, a family turmoil erupts as the war closes in.
A group of POWs in a German prison camp during World War II play the German National Soccer Team in this powerful film depicting the role of prisoners during wartime.
The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement by his blackmailers.
In Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated.
A psychological thriller about an eight year old boy named Cole Sear who believes he can see into the world of the dead. A child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe comes to Cole to help him deal with his problem, learning that he really can see ghosts of dead people.
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
At a boarding school in the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire, a pair of students torture one of their fellow classmates, Basini, who has been caught stealing money from one of the two. The two decide that rather than turn Basini in to the school authorities, they will punish him themselves and proceed to torture, degrade, and humiliate the boy, with ever-increasing sadistic delight. As each day passes, the two boys are able to justify harsher treatment than previously given. Torless is a passive member of the group but observes rather than participates and frustrates the tormentors by dryly analyzing their behavior. Written by Dean Harris
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His diplomatic status in a Catholic country prevents Colonel Kappler from openly arresting him, but O'Flaherty's activities become so large that the Nazi's decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican. O'Flaherty continues his work in a variety of disguises. Based on a true story. Written by John Vogel
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
A young man who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for robbing a post office ends up spending 30 years in solitary confinement. During this time, his own personality is supplanted by his alter ego, Charles Bronson.
The last 14 months of George Jackson's life was an existence under subjective and objective conditions in California's industrial prison complex. George Jackson would spend 11 years in jail (7 of which were in solitary confinement) for a $70 gas station robbery crime in 1960. He was 18 years of age when the sentence of one year-to-life was handed down to him.
Chicago crime kid Mick O'Brien has been sent to a juvenile prison for vehicular manslaughter. Most unfortunately, the person he kills is the kid brother of his nemesis Paco Moreno, who vows revenge by raping Mick's girlfriend. Paco is caught and sent to the same prison where he re-works his revenge plan, and Mick has no choice but to defend himself.
Hotshot gambler Jake Green (Jason Statham) is long on bravado and seriously short of common sense. Rarely is he allowed in any casino because he's a bona fide winner and, in fact, has taken so much money over the years that he's the sole client of his accountant elder brother, Billy. Invited to a private game, Jake is in fear of losing his life.

© Valossa 2015–2024