The Prisoner

A cardinal is arrested for treason. He is a hero to his people, having resisted the Nazis during the war and resisted again when his country fell to a second totalitarian regime. In prison his interrogator wants one thing, a confession of guilt, because that is the only way to break his hold on the public. Adapted from Bridget Boland's 1954 play, the 1955 film never names the cardinal, though the character is openly based on the Hungarian cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. Alec Guinness plays him and Jack Hawkins the interrogator. It was pulled from both Cannes and Venice for fear of offending communist governments. Its subject is not politics but how a person's confidence in himself can be taken apart.