The Glass Cage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into List of Mission: Impossible episodes. (Discuss) |
 |
This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (February 2008) |
 |
This article lacks information on the notability of the subject matter. Please help improve this article by providing context for a general audience, especially in the lead section. (May 2008) |
Contents |
[edit] Tape scene:
Inside a railroad station, Jim comes close to a kinetoscope and inserts a 5 cents coin in it. He comes out a portable speaker from his jacket's pocket that he connects to the machine.
[edit] Summary:
To free silent Anton Reisner, a political leader and head of the Resistance, from the automated Trast prison and in order to prevent his next day lobotomy by Dr. Sprav, the IMF poses as convicts (Barney and Willy) to simulate a false escape and as Soviet high officials (Jim, Rollin and Cinnamon) to stimulate the ambition of young Captain Gulka as Prison Commandant and to turn him against his superior Major Zilenko (waiting for his pending promotion as State Security Minister) to make him arrest for treason.
[edit] Cast and details:
Prison Commandant Major Nicholas Zelinko and his frustrated assistant warden Captain Gulka (carrying spectacles), Captain Vasney, Lieutenant Szabos and political convict Anton Reisner are played by Lloyd Bochner and Larry Linville, Lou Robb, George Perina and Richard Garland. In order to know Resistance agents, Major Zelinko tortures Reisner with a high level of (140) decibels! Reisner's metallic chair comes from "The Execution"! The interrogation glass cage is called Maximum Security Psychological Processing Cell and a security guard is in charge of its activities: he unlocks a glass panel with a key, presses buttons to set the stairs and open the glass cell and, finally, the openings are controlled by two sources: a counter displaying the number and a Security Cell book that is logged by the same man. The office of Major Zilenko is next to the Master Control Room. Zilenko hides a communication unit in the top drawer of his desk to check the arrival of Colonel Dreiga and Anna Nilas; later, Zilenko leaves the prison and gives the command to Gulka and goes with Cinnamon to her lodge to thwart Major Brinov's intentions. At the village's lodge door, Zilenko listens to Cinnamon and Rollin pretending to have a love and ambition feud; returning from his one hour visit and finding the escape anarchy, Zilenko goes to the Master Control Room to check the activity of Reisner's cell along with Gulka and finds contradictory openings by comparing the log (27) and the Maximum Security Psychological Processing Cell (28) and then asks Gulka to verify the video recording--as Belzig from "The Bank"--and witnesses the small footage of escaping Reisner. Both Zilenko and Gulka go down to the Maximum Security Gate #1, see the scratch on the lock and Zilenko interrogates Reisner who talks--they figure it out he is an impostor. At Master Control Room, Captain Vasney along with Cinnamon, Rollin and Jim hear Zilenko's secret plot to hide the disaster to the officials. Zilenko goes straight to the File Room to check the fingerprints of Reisner. Rollin, accompanied by Captain Vasney, catches Zilenko up and bring him back to the Maximum Security Gate #1 where Captain Gulka confesses the treason of his superior. Reisner undergoes a fingerprints test and they compare it with the original: they don't match. Cinnamon puts Zilenko under a rest, brings him back with the so-called fake Reisner to Division Headquarters, promotes the righteous Captain Gulka to the position of Prison Commandant.
Cinnamon poses as agent Anna Nilas (wearing a brown leathered overcoat and carrying austere metallic spectacles) posing as head of the prison system Christine Zensky (ID #13967) on her way to visit the prison for a study but she is suspected by Major Zelinko who threatens her with a pistol and she's forced to pass an ID test: a false Anna Nilas, accompanied by Lieutenant Szabos, is sent as a setup to confuse her; Cinnamon-as-Nilas looks like a very harsh and deadly dry school teacher but she is also the girlfriend of Rollin-as-Brinov (what a couple!). Gulka escorts Cinnamon-as-Zensky to the File Room and she excites his jealousy by talking about the promotion of Prison Commandant given to another official (Major Krunyev); Gulka leaves because Captain Vasney steps into the room (and orders him to go to Master Control Room) and Cinnamon orders him to bring back the files of the new prisoners while she substitutes the file of Reisner; she examins Barney and Willy's files and goes to the Master Control Room to stick a mini magnetic gas releaser (extracted from the lock numbers of her briefcase) under the edge of a control glass booth; at Zilenko's office, she stirs up again the jealousy with a promotion by asserting that Major Brinov will become the new State Security Minister; she asks Captain Vasney to inspect the Cell #14 whose door can only be opened by the use of a special key and by calling Master Control Room and, inside the cell, she presses a briefcase's button that opens a compartment and ejects an equipments-laden towel (black gloves, explosives, pen gun, bullets, spike, rope, pulley, gas cylinder, video unit, key). Cinnamon confesses to Major Zilenko that Rollin-as-Brinov has used her for his selfish interest for power and asks him to accompany her to her appointment at the village's lodge to protect his promotion.
Jim poses as a "State Bureau Telephone" repairman to redirect the line via the com-suitcase and light brown-leathered Colonel Igor Dreiga; over the phone Jim-as-Dreiga asks Zilenko to keep Zensky because of a trap; Jim exchanges his briefcase by Cinnamon's one at Zilenko's office.
Rollin poses as a "State Bureau Telephone" repairman, as a Division Headquarters operator (to answer Zilenko's request about talking to the absent General Hunza and passes him Colonel Dreiga instead) and as dark brown-leathered Major Ivan Brinov. Rollin does his makeup inside the telephone Citroen truck: to pose as a Soviet officer, Rollin has a phony scare on his face, wears a blonde wig (see "Wheels") with thick blonde moustache (sic) and is a professional interrogator who fashions his own truth drug (duranacyl unlike Major Zelinko's sodium thiaprin)! Rollin looks like actor Helmut Berger posing as a SS.
Barney and Willy pose as convicts Jan Taleb and Wilhem Vasko. Here's the detail of their false escape: Barney sticks an explosive adhesive paper to the lock of the cell's door then adds a red wire to bypass Master Control Room which is gased down by the mini canister. Barney builds a pen gun to launch: a bullet fireworks (that projects huge sparks) to block the display of the surveillance camera and creates a smoke screen, a metal spike-pulley (Cf. James West's season 3 trade mark) to the other side of the electrified area into the ventilation's grid (while Willy tightens the rope from his close side and painfully avoid moving on the the black line at the tip of his toes), a metal spike at the bottom of a wall to secure the ropes of the two grids; he crosses the electrified area suspended on a tight rope and stops at the end of the line, changes his position, swings backwards and jumps in the rear to reach the black security line--Willy follows the same risky procedure. Barney launches another bullet-fireworks to cover the area of Reisner's cell. Willy scratches Reisner's cell lock on purpose while Barney enters Master Control Room, drops a mini canister on the floor, customizes the video recording of the Maximum Security 1st Floor: he stops the video recording, rewinds, stops and makes a montage with his portable editing unit (a small cutting bench that can erase and record) by adding a small video segment depicting the escape of Reisner; Barney then picks up the microphone, identifies himself (he says twice: "97", Reisner replies reluctantly: "17" and he concludes: "43") and gives instructions to Reisner (not to leave his cell, don't talk about the opening and say your name and unimportant things). Willy goes down to the basement. Barney activates the cell's stairs and door and close it all via the Maximum Security Psychological Processing Cell which marks 28 openings. Barney opens the garbage chute and gets rid of his extra outfit. Willy cuts the main generator which breeds the general alert: the main gate guard and Lieutenant Szabos talk to each other at the main gate and the sentries take the machine guns. Willy restores the power therefore the alarm rings and Barney runs to Gate 4 and is arrested; Barney and Willy are brought to the office of Zilenko for interrogation: just returning from his journey, Zilenko yells at Gulka's negligence and discovers that prisoners' files are forged and their escape a diversion and questions the two men.
During the apartment scene, Barney shows the team a bogus video recording starring a lookalike of Reisner, another fine IMF parade. Another episode featuring no dossier scene therefore the IMF logo appears at the start of Act I. As in "The System", the place is made of steel and features a booby trapped floor (electrified)--as Costa with matchbook, Captain Vasney tests it by dropping a pack of cigarettes who burns instantly. To show the outdoors of the Trast prison, the film editor recycles footages from "Memory" for the tape scene and the start of Act I. The last ten minutes seem to be the editing work of Bruce Geller because of the use of the optical zooming and the rushed ending is actually the exit footage from the season 1 "The Carriers": a running car that passes the "Zöna Restrik" gate plus the white American TypeWriter titles from season 1 that mentions "Executive Producer Bruce Geller" over a freeze frame.
The last Trast prison scene before the car's departure is memorable: Loud MISSION martial theme music, zoom in on low angle Reisner who rises up out of his chair of his cell, high angle close-up on Cinnamon-as-Anna Nilas who leaves the frame then pan shot on Rollin-as-Brinov, still zoom in on Reisner who gets down the stairs, close-up on Rollin who leaves the frame then pan shot on Jim-as-Driega, still zoom in on Reisner who carries on descending, close-up on Jim who leaves the frame, still zoom in on moving Reisner who is off-centered.
[edit] Review:
This is the first offering of British director John L. Moxey and a good claustrophobic escape-proof communist prison plot a la "Memory" but conceived by Paul Playdon that features a political convict locked up in a special cage as in "The Test Case": see the recycled set used for the Master Control Room, the gased down control room and Barney's explosive adhesive paper. The totalitarian esthetic comes back full force to denounce the abuse of the suffocating bureaucraty combined with the invading technology. Two character's names start with a "Z": Zilenko and Zensky hence their business relationship concerning the candidate for the promotion!
[edit] Stock music:
• "The Mind of Stefan Miklos" (The outdoors of he Trast prison; Reisner's decibels interrogation; Zilenko watching the Security Cell Record that displays 28 openings and watch the video recording of Reisner's escape; Rollin-as-Brinov and Captain Vasney go to the File Room to arrest Zilenko and get Reisner's file) • "The Exchange" (Riesner's screams of pain owing to the 140 decibels) • "The Cardinal" (Enter Catherine Zensky to Zilenko's office; Barney and Willy step into the prison; Zilenko receivs a call during his interview with Zensky; Barney launches a bullet that creates a smoke screen and installs the pulley) • "The Play" (Barney and Willy blow up the cell's door) • "The Heir Apparent" (the suspenseful risky tight rope scene executed by Barney and Willy) • "The Contender" (Barney is caught up and locked in Gate 4) • "The Execution"
