I decided to watch the football last night and it was a case of bye, bye England but I remembered to record the fantastic film “The Triple Echo” on True Movies. I had seen the film before once but it stuck in my mind and I was more than happy to see it in the schedule last night.
A soldier Barton (Brian Deacon) stationed in Wiltshire, England during WWII meets Alice (Glenda Jackson) who has been keeping her husband's farm going single-handed whilst the Japanese are holding him a prisoner of war. Barton soon starts helping around the farm and it’s not long before they become lovers.
Barton decides not to return to the army and Alice offers to give him a place to hide and to stop any gossip of a strange young man living on the farm she comes up with an idea. The plan was to dress Barton in woman’s clothes, makeup the full hog and pretend to be her sister, Cathy.
It throws the Military Police off her/his scent and even the locals are convinced but there is trouble on the horizon from a nearby army camp. A brutish army sergeant (Oliver Reed) comes across the farm and takes a shine immediately to both women alone with no men. However, it is the younger Barton he really wants and while Alice knows, where this could lead. With the sergeant becoming a regular visitor to the farm Cathy finds the attention flattering and stupidly agrees to go to a dance with him being naive to the consequences, Alice refuses to go she knows what the smitten sergeant is after.
Has he gone rogue and beginning to like Cathy and the dressing and make-up? Alice is no longer attracted to Barton/Cathy and their relationship deteriorates and as much as she tells Cathy of the dangers of going to the party.
At the party, she (Cathy) starts to realise the trouble she was in and tries to escape out of the toilet window to little avail. Waiting outside the toilet the sergeant grabs her and pushes her into a side office, time to pay the piper. Inside his mate is copulating with a real lady and the nasty sergeant is like a kid in a sweetie shop jumps into attack mode grabs a feel he has a surprise which leads into one of the best scenes has he realises.
He was shocked to find meat and two veg and he is not happy Cathy manages to get a good knee into his lower regions and does a runner. Once the sergeant recovers, he sets off in pursuit checking in the office for soldiers who are on the run from the army and spots Cathy.
Cathy heads for home with the former randy sergeant and the Military Police closing in on Alice’s farm. Alice and Cathy have a tender goodbye. He is now no longer Cathy and makes a runr for it but is soon caught. Kind of knowing the treatment, he could receive in prison Alice shoots him.
The cross-dressing aspect of the tale is what makes this an unusual Second World War film. It is hard to believe that the rugged Oliver Reed would genuinely mistake Deacon for a woman, but there you go. The climax has an air of inevitable tragedy to it, so a sense of foreboding seeps over the latter stages of the film which I liked. The central performances are subtle and effective, although Reed is something of a scene-stealer as the flamboyant and utterly horrid army sergeant.
My Rating
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