Otley (1969)

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Directed by Dick Clement

Written by Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement

Based on the novel by Martin Waddell

Cast: Tom Courtenay as Gerald Arthur Otley; Romy Schneider as Imogen; Alan Badel as Sir Alec Hadrian; James Villiers as Hendrickson; Leonard Rossiter as Johnson; Freddie Jones as Philip Proudfoot; Fiona Lewis as Lin; James Bolam as Albert; James Cossins as Geffcock; James Maxwell as Rollo; Edward Hardwicke as Lambert; Ronald Lacey as Curtis; Phyllida Law as Jean

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Released in the wave of influence James Bond had on cinema - regional interpretations, rip-offs, spy films in general - alongside the more grounded adult versions of espionage especially coming from the United Kingdom like The Ipcress File (1965), Otley is what happens when even these low key and realistic spy dramas were taken further when a snarky former university graduate, coach surfing, has to be the central protagonist in a spy war and web of conspiracies when he's accidentally sleeping in the room when an acquaintance is assassinated. Waking up the night after inexplicably in an empty football/soccer field, he has by fate found himself in the midst of two rival factors in London.

Speaking as someone who actually likes the franchise, I find that Bond has always come off as a stereotype of British culture, an elitist figure for the government of an entirely different type of the cinema viewing audience, reflected as the sixties films were as much tourist documentaries for exotic locations as they were action films. Even the idea of creating a female James Bond that have persisted wouldn't be able to cover the fact that, as an institution, all the potentially problematic cultural baggage of that fact would still be found. Otley's noticeably different as our lead's as working class as you could get. You don't have Sean Connery fleeing police with a bacon sandwich in one hand over canal boats. Even the Roger Moore years, when the franchise got sillier, even Diamonds Are Forever (1971) with Connery, weren't this openly absurd rather than accidentally. An entirely different language is to be found here visually and in content that pops the balloon of spy adventure as a farce.

A very big factor to mind for Otley is that in the director seat is Dick Clement, who co-writers this novel adaptation with his regular collaborator Ian La Frenais. For the British, the pair is more than likely known as writers than filmmaking as, with the many reruns and TV programmes about old British television we still have in the 2010s, they have a legacy of huge hits. Specifically it's Porridge (1974-7), (an institution I even saw episodes of growing up decades later), Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (1973-4), (and its 1964-6 prequel The Likely Lads), and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, (1983-2004 for all its tie-ins), which are huge cultural signposts in British TV. Porridge is the only one I know of so far, but apt with Otley as, shot in a matter-of-fact and following Ronnie Baker as a prisoner, that style of black humour with a lot of dialogue based humour is felt here only with a cinema budget, more ambition and humour that is a lot more caustic.

Barring one offensive comment against a Chinese masseuse, a lot about Otley has aged a lot better when a lot of British humour of the past will wilt in the fires of political correctness, not even from a perspective of a snowflake social justice warrior but that sixties and seventies Britain is an entirely alien to decades later^1.. Instead, Otley is amazing nasty and black humoured in a way that hasn't dated but is pretty stark, especially as this is rated "PG", suitable for family viewing in spite of how sharp the witticisms are. This isn't a nice, cuddly British comedy of old, but proudly sharper, as the titular Otley is surrounded by men in suspicious groups who callously call their wives a bitch, or include the bizarre but scene stealing character of an assassin whose day job is a tour coach driver who owns a farm. Even one important side character, who could've easily been a crass gay stereotype, is more interesting with nuisance and because his actor relishes the pithy remarks of his. Even the fact the plot gets confusing does a favour as it adds to our somewhat hero, somewhat anti-hero, being completely lost.

Said Otley is of course played by Tom Courtenay, and he's tremendous. Otley at times is a prick, but he's also a charming one even when he pickpockets valuable possessions throughout the narrative, Courtenay a huge lynchpin among many for this film to actually work. He does nothing amiss, and barring that one offensive one liner, every comment or joke at the expense of his situation is amusing and usually self deprecating first. Drifting through life, it's a fascinating character to dump into this scenario, still a handsome charming figure because of Courtenay's prescience, even making the fact that he woos Romy Schneider's female spy credible as well as in depicting his cluelessness of what is happening. It also adds credibility to what happens even in the context of a comedy which exaggerates this genre, more credible in realism arguably than many spy films to this day.

Again, returning to even the romantic subplot having credibility, this manages as a PG rated film in Britain to be quite frank about sex, so it never feels like it is undercutting verisimilitude by being prudish, instantly showing this as Otley is first found sharing his older landlady's bed, she happy with the night together but still kicking him out for not paying the rent, immediately making even some of James Bond's innuendo childish in comparison from the era. Schneider's prescience is a surprise, a huge actress of European cinema abruptly appearing in this British film, more so as by this point she was already cementing a legendary reputation. This was not the last time she was in a British financed film, Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch (1980) with Harvey Keitel set in Scotland, but certainly given the role that, frankly, has a lot more nuisance than most Bond Girls, (all?), it was a hell of a casting choice.

Shot in London and out in the countryside, played to humour when the coach driving assassin has Otley as a prisoner but still has him do farm labour to pass the time, the film's verisimilitude does stand out and not just for nostalgia, also adding a lot of character to create some excellent scenes. A lot of this is taking advantage of the locations for humour and effect. A chase on the intercity canal is made between as it involves actual canal boats. The Notting Hill Gate subway becomes a place of a trade where a suitcase may be a trap with sickly humoured results, all with additional historical interest in how the posters of the era look. The countryside, isolated, offers a surrealism of an assassin who'll still offer his prisoner a cup of tea and force them to clear out pig muck in their stay there. And then there's the central scene where Otley tries to take a driving test only for it to abruptly turn into a car chase, which is magnificence and shouldn't be spoiled.

Its amazing Otley is an obscurity, but in general the sixties and seventies could be seen as a lost era for British cinema; for every great film, the likes of the British Film Institute's "Flipside" project took years to uncover a lot of forgotten and underrated gems, not even getting around to this one. This was a Columbia Pictures release, which made it a pretty big production for the era, which was probably not a help in the damndest. Among all the spy parodies, or straight up spy films, Otley could've have easily been lost in the crowd. A shame hopefully to rectify as this was an excellent discovery, a film I knew of for years and could thankfully see.

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1) I mean, good God, for all the stick we could level at the Americans, they didn't have a primetime minstrel show, about white performers doing numbers in actual blackface, called The Black and White Minstrel Show that lasted between 1958 to 1978. One which had fucking merchandising and novelty records at that.

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The Prisoner (1967-68)

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Directors: Patrick McGoohan, Pat Jackson, Don Chaffey, David Tomblin, Robert Asher and Peter Graham Scott

Creator: Patrick McGoohan

Synopsis: Prisoner No. 6 (Patrick McGoohan) is former secret agent for the British government who resigns, only to find himself in the strange community known as The Village, deemed as having too much valuable knowledge to release. A place cut off from the entire world, The Village might be idyllic in appearance but it is a place for former spies  and agents where those in control will gladly use any means for the villagers to comply. With a revolving door of No.2s, all of them trying to learn why No. 6 resigned, No. 6 is both concerned about escaping The Village and who No. 1 is.

How do you talk of The Prisoner? Others have - Repo Man (1984) director Alex Cox has written a book to coincide with the series' fiftieth anniversary. Many have parodied or referenced the series including The Simpsons. Even in the least likeliest of places one swears the scriptwriter was taking direct inspiration from this series, such as the version of the Village Jean-Claude Van Damn ends up in during Double Team (1997). But we should not forget, as my own father had recounted when he saw the seventeen episode one-off back in the day, how bloody odd The Prisoner actually is. Despite only a few of the episodes being canonical to his idea, this was star Patrick McGoohan's personal project which he was able to have due to his success from the likes of Danger Man (1960-68), one where he openly led viewers into a bizarre tale of nonconformity.

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The spy tales of before in his career merge into this, the secret agent No. 6 finding himself within the Wonderland of The Village. The use of quaint English iconography, from the garden tables and parasols to the symbol of the Penny Farthing, not only prevent the series from dating by being overtly artificial and colourful, but it brings about a paradox in how alienating the environment is despite looking like the utopia found on a jigsaw puzzle. The Village promotes democracy and happiness for its occupants at a price, and it is telling that with the first few episode No. 6 manages to already escape in the series only for things to be completely against him. It is even more telling one of the first episodes has him in an election to become the new No. 2, the event an utter sham controlled out of his will from the start. The metaphors, the cage of conformist life, are obvious but what leaves a lasting impression is how far and how out there this can be to the point of existentialism for No. 6.

Even in the context of the Cold War, The Prisoner instead feels like McGoohan exorcising concerns of how ultimately one cannot find true freedom, which he was open about in later interviews after the series broadcast. That it is by the perverse whimsy of late sixties psychedelic and British upper-lip aesthetic, the Good Ol' Days in its colour and harmonious looking environment, actually adds to this dark meaning in that it feels like Lewis Carroll's version of a Franz Kafka story. It also does not deny how openly weird the series still is, and more so when this was screen on ITV in the UK and shown on American television back fifty years ago. But helping it to succeed, alongside the choice of the Welsh village of Portmeirion as The Village, is the openly whimsical and multicoloured aesthetic. McGoohan, by the way, is incredible. Here you have an actor willing to put himself in everything even for a personal pet project, startling for myself as I have only known him before from his role in Scanners (1981). That he can be suave, that his lines can be full of playful barbs, that facial expression and tone of voice mean a great deal, adds to an incredible performance. He is willing to be pushed and not just in terms of literally, around in a wheelchair with a child-like expression on his face holding an ice cream at one point, but act as a character who is both mentally and physically beaten, controlled and even lobotomised throughout the episodes. Only an attempt at a Western drawl in one episode feels out of place, ironic as he is an American-born actor, but everything else has tremendous power.

Thankfully he was backed by a vast and revolving cast of British actors who will all need to be investigated in terms of their own careers. The Prisoner had the inspired idea, likely to reduce the issue of having to negotiate for the same actor over and over, of having No. 2 being a nebulous figure whose role is played by multiple actors and actresses. One actor, Leo McKern, plays a reoccurring and important part of the main narrative, but switching the No. 2 position adds to the sense of an organisation in The Village more sinister and difficult for No. 6 to fight against, anyone revealed to be No. 2 or a collaborator with a sense nothing is trustable. As No. 2 is the real villain the protagonist is up against, it proves more sinister how they can change easily, how disposable they even are as one episode's plot is about the old No. 2 being potentially assassinated by his replacement.

As there are seventeen episodes, there are too many plots to describe. But The Prisoner immediately from the first episodes fluctuates between science fiction, paranoid spy thriller and the utterly strange. Minds are swapped. One episode opens with nearly fifteen minutes without any dialogue. A costume party turns into a kangaroo court. Even No. 6's dreams are not safe from manipulation. There is a sense that as well though, if the series had gone longer, it could have dwindled. The creative team before the final two episodes try to expand out of The Village for one-offs that stray completely out of the conventions of what came before. One I profess to admiring, an even stranger story involving No. 6 against a villain wearing a Napoleon outfit, a chase through a carnival theme park and exploding cricket balls. The western episode however is the one average episode which warns that, whilst these later episodes even play with the reoccurring opening credits to interest effect, they could have derailed the series into the worst. Thankfully that episode ends well, but it arguably is the one bad moment in the entire series as it sounds exactly as average as you would presume from a British TV production trying to film a western, something that is parodied in Red Dwarf for its artificiality for a reason. Thankfully what you get in the first fourteen episodes, before the last two and excluding the western one, are all compelling. All inventive and catching you off guard continually.

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Thankfully The Prisoner ends the right way too. Well, it ends but in a way that was notorious. The ending, appropriately called Fall Out, can be compared to the infamous last ending of another cult series from the nineties, Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). They are exceptionally different series entirely, but both of them make fascinating comparison to each other. For how they became immensely popular when they were first premiering on television, but both ending with metaphorical endings rather than clear explanations of what happened. Both created in chaotic circumstances - the animated Evangelion plagued by its co-creator Hideaki Anno's deep depression during production and being prevented from creating the original ending, The Prisoner from McGoohan having little time and no idea how to end his project. Both endings did not go down well, Anno getting death threats from fans, McGoohan having to briefly hide from fans. The Prisoner's ending is stranger in how, on the surface, it is so disappointingly matter-of-fact in how No. 6 escapes without any tension. That does not include how in the midst of Fall Out you get licensed music of The Beatles on the soundtrack, a shock considering the licensing issues now that has caused for other older productions, and the unexpected mass chorus of Dem Bones in the middle of the episode. How metaphors literally speak out to represent various forms of subversion and what the hell No. 1 is supposed to be under the gorilla mask. That geography is defied and you witness Patrick McGoohan prancing around in the open side of a truck with a porcelain tea pot just adds to the weirdness. That he is not given his usual credit but just "The Prisoner" in his last few scenes of the series just adds to the sense of something being amiss. The perfect ending in hindsight because of this.

Abstract Spectrum: Mindbender/Paranoia/Psychedelic/Weird

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Legendary with just cause. This it is a mainstream television series, that still followed the structure of an episodic programme, helps with its strangeness especially when one imagines how people reacted to the series back in the late sixties. (And the reactions to the ending would have been more extreme). It is a case of a work which got away with so much as long as it still kept a sliver of convention to help viewers get into it, allowing The Prisoner to have gained the mainstream and cult reputation it had whilst still being unconventional even for someone like myself. Why it took so long for me to view the seventeen episodes is embarrassing but it was still a rewarding experience.

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