Hammer into Anvil

"Hammer into Anvil" is an episode of the 1960s television program The Prisoner. It is one of the minority of episodes that do not deal with Number Six attempting to escape or the Village authorities attempting to coerce him into revealing information.

Plot summary

Number Two interrogates a female prisoner (Number Seventy-Three) in the Village hospital. The woman rebuffs him and steadfastly refuses to cooperate. Frustrated by this, Number Two attacks her. Hearing her screams through the window, Number Six rushes to her aid. As he bursts through the door, the momentary commotion gives the girl a chance to leap from her bed and commit suicide by leaping from the window, escaping Number Two's torture.

Number Six vows to destroy Number Two. Already aware that he is being watched by the Village's hidden camera and spies at every turn, Six begins acting in a highly suspicious manner, as if he were some sort of spy or double agent.

He takes six copies of the same record of Bizet's L'Arlésienne Suites at the music store and plays them, eyeing his watch. Later on, he asks the town band to play the same piece. He sends out a carrier pigeon with a message from "D-6" to "XO4", referencing the Bizet records and stating that he will send out a visual signal. This pigeon is intercepted by Number Two's forces, who intercept the visual signal (in light-flash Morse code) - a nursery rhyme with no apparent hidden meaning.

When the other keepers of the village can not discern the hidden meaning in Six's messages, Number Two suspects everyone working for him of being part of a conspiracy. In the end, Number Six confronts Number Two, who expresses the belief that Number Six is really "D-6", a man sent by "XO4" to test his security. Feeding on Number Two's paranoia, Number Six charges Number Two with treason: if Number Two's belief was true, then he would be duty-bound not to interfere. At Number Six's insistence, Number Two calls the hotline to Number One to report his own failures and ask that he be replaced.

Additional guest cast

• Band Master: Victor Maddern
• Number Fourteen: Basil Hoskins
• Psychiatric director: Derek Smee
• New supervisor: Derek Aylward
• Number Seventy-Three: Hilary Dwyer
• Control room supervisor: Arthur Gross
• Supervisor: Peter Swanwick
• Shop assistant: Victor Woolf
• Laboratory technician: Michael Segal
• Shop kiosk girl: Margo Andrew
• Female code expert: Susan Sheers
• Guardian: Jackie Cooper
• Guardian: Fred Haggerty
• Guardian: Eddie Powell
• Guardian: George Leech

Notes

• Several key exterior scenes featuring Patrick McGoohan were filmed on location in Portmeirion. None of the other principal actors in this episode appear in actual location footage, although a double is used for Number Fourteen in some location scenes.
• When Number Two calls Number Six to the Green Dome the first time, he threatens to break him, quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Du mußt Amboß oder Hammer sein" ("You must be Anvil or Hammer"). "And you see me as the anvil?" asks Number Six, to which Number Two answers "Precisely. I am going to hammer you." The interesting thing is that Number Two has the analogy backwards; as George Orwell wrote in "Politics and the English Language": "In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about."
• Patrick Cargill, who plays Number Two, had previously appeared in the episode "Many Happy Returns" as Thorpe. It is left ambiguous as to whether or not it is the same character.

Bibliography

• Fairclough, Robert, ed. The Prisoner: The Original Scripts. vol. 2. foreword by Roger Parkes. Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 978-1903111819. OCLC 61145235.  - script of episode

External links

• The Prisoner: Hammer Into Anvil at the Internet Movie Database