It parodies a favourite theme of the cinema - the eternal triangle - and shows how six countries might deal with the moment a husband returns home unexpectedly to find his wife with a lover, with Sarah Miles, Nicol Williamson and Bill Meilen.
[1] Using the eternal triangle as the main theme, the film shows how six countries might deal with the moment a husband returns home unexpectedly to find his wife with a lover, with the same three actors playing all the roles.
As this theme was first explored by the silent cinema, it begins with desert sheiks, tents, Persian brocades and an Arab husband's revenge, however the English are less hot- blooded with rain stopping the cricket, and a compromise over a whisky.
The Japanese resort to harakiri unable to stomach American intervention, and the Italian stilted subtitles misinterpret the lover's hot-bloodied feelings with "I admire your bust" and the husband's anger with "I should never have married a Neapolitan lady of the town!".
The Swedes are silent in their snow-bound house, as the ticking handless clock fails to tell the time in the pervading gloom, as they carry on with their infidelities even after poison and wild strawberries are consumed, whereas the French New Wave and excessive hand- held cameras follow a lover's search for a cigarette, and where 'ça va?'
John and Roy Boulting, two of the company's directors, liked the script and were willing to put up £1,000 towards the £6,000 total budget, leaving Miles and his co-producer Sara Bennett to find the rest.
This added to the budget costs, and was unnecessary as the portable light-weight Nagra tape-recorder, and others already invented several years earlier, could have avoided having the need for two extra crew members who used to move the old 1940-50's heavy equipment around the sound-stage.
I liked especially Sarah Miles silent heroin with the Bella Donna eyes providing such fun in peeling a grape; Nicol Williamson manages to look wonderfully like Bergman's actor Max von Sydow, and Bill Meilen gives a good impression of Jean-Paul Belmondo.
A few months ago I saw another short piece of his, "A Vol d'Oiseau" (Bird's Eye View) an engaging fantasy about Paris - a beginners work but they have ideas they ought to be given a chance.
This wry, sly, witty half-hour film shows a talent worth encouraging" DAILY MIRROR [21] "If ever the world's supply of sex symbols dries up, we can do a roaring trade exporting Miss Sarah Miles.These thoughts are prompted by a delicious bit of burlesque called "The Six-Sided Triangle" It is a skilful spoof of how the directors of five countries and one left over from the cinema's silent era, would cope with the most universal moment in movies when the husband returns home unexpectedly.
There is a priceless spoof of "Divorce Italian Style" with Sarah Miles wearing Sophia Loren's smile and Gina Lollobrigida's bosom, while subtitles of sub-literate compositions follow a line like, "Let us declare our friendship" and one like, "Angel cake".
The same scenes in Sweden are a masterpiece of gloomy seduction, that ends with a joyless pair of lovers noisily eating their soup with doom laden slurping.
For love in the French style Miss Miles lets down her hair into lascivious Bardo tresses, and the handheld camera makes a simple gesture of reaching for a cigarette into an excuse for a detailed tour of two bare torsos.