INDIFFERENCE

An aura of timelessness and out-of-the-place mood, or even absolute indetermination, is conveyed by very archictectural features of the real village's (Portmeirion's) doubtless alluring blend of styles that won't just tolerate contradiction, resistance or any rebelliousness but make all of it useless from the start.
Because everything is, at the same, time equally valid (German: gleich-gültig). From Orwell we know there is no such thing as history or, which is the same meaning, history that is subject to constant changes and rewrites can and must be made any time if considered necessary. In this respect there isn't a LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, never has been nor will be and every day "again a beautiful day", as announced implicitly by the Village radio. Let's do the time warp again...!

When Number Six regards the Village map for the first time this (tautological) circle closes in. In another scene Number Six angrily smashes his radio receiver. He leaves home and walks through the Village and is quite puzzled encountering the gardener he had met as the repairman only a couple of minutes before. Or has he? - Can't really catch it - something underlying the whole show.

The villagers' salutation - "Be Seeing You!" - is an empty ritual; their gesticulation pointing to eternal recurrence, circularity, self-contained as the Village or the series' cyclical structure itself. The Pennyfarthing’s wheels - there’s a real one standing around somewhere at times - keep spinning at the end of each episode with no aim. But with the contorted moebius tape, there isn't an outside at all.

BELLE EPOQUE

The notion of a spa, or a sanatorium, a mental institution, is emphasized largely by the Village's remoteness and seclusion. Occasional views of villagers from a distance show them doing vacation-like things, bathing, resting on the beach, taking a walk on the piazza, always carrying colourful umbrellas and even performing parades (more...) . And what's more to a spa, there is also music.

As early as in episode one Number Six listens to the spot concert (German: "Platzkonzert") performed by the Village Band at the band stand, which is the Bristol Colonnade in real life. In many episodes the "Radetzki-Marsch", composed by Johann Strauss, is heard. The connotation of "good ole" K.u.K.* past kept alive and brought into the contemporary is to a great extend due to this period piece.

CHESSBOARD REVIVED: PORTMEIRICON 1991

MARIENBAD (LAST YEAR?) - "THERE WAS A VILLAGE..."

It is probably unfair to compare the movie of 1961, made by Alain Resnais, originally titled L'ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD, with a commercial TV series like THE PRISONER. But, after all, certainly there are some strains which tie both of them together or mark their respective boundary. Which, in turn, depends on your - subjective - perspective.

IMAGINARY CHESSBOARD: LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
ALAIN RESNAIS 1961 MOVIE LETZTES JAHR IN MARIENBAD (L'ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD)

This movie was scripted by French nouvelle-vague writer Alain Robbes-Grillet and features four characters, named "A", "M", "X", who are humans. The fourth character is the very place they are in. It seems to be a sumptious resort hotel which is never really located any time or place, with large sterile hallways and gardens where the trees and bushes do not cast shadows while the people do. One man tries to persuade a woman into a relationship and that they had already met maybe a year ago in a hotel in the town of Marienbad - or possibly somewhere else. It's the viewer's guess. The character's are isolated, their interaction is detached.

One encyclopedia describes the movie's "unsettling mood". Another stresses its dismissal, deconstruction and manipulation of cinematic time and narrative structures in decentering the human subject so common in Hollywood films.

It is at this point that the series' lack of interconnection of and, at times, a bit erratic episodes matches this specific issue. There’s also quite a bit of symbolism in the series.
A pity that this visual and dissociative disposition is only scarcely employed by the series, most notably in "Arrival" and "Free For All".

PRISONERESQUE - more...
SURREALISM - more...

*) "K.u.K." - "Kaiser und König" ("emperor and king") - the expression for the former Austrian-Hungarian monarchy which ceased to exist after WW I. Marienbad is a small fin-de-siècle 19th century spa in today's Czech Republic which, in turn, used to be part of the glorious K.u.K. empire.

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