The Triple Echo[1] (U.S title: Soldier in Skirts) is a 1972 British drama film directed by Michael Apted starring Glenda Jackson, Brian Deacon and Oliver Reed, and based on the 1970 novella by H.E.

[3][4] In England during World War II, Alice, a woman running a farm in the countryside, discovers a young man named Barton roaming the fields.

[5] When the military police begin to search for Barton, he must take measures to avoid being caught, so Alice helps him form the disguise of a woman, whom she says is her sister Jill.

[9] In March 1972 it was announced that the film version would star Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, reuniting them after their success in Women in Love.

Indeed it would have fitted very well into the recent Country Matters series, though the extra time and the freedom from "natural breaks" do permit a more leisurely development of background and atmosphere.

The fertile valley; the remote farmhouse; the solitary woman striding over the fields, gun in hand; her hostile reaction to a stranger and the easy change to friendliness and hospitality when she meets a sympathetic response: all these – in a series of easy flowing pictures and half a dozen lines of dialogue – create an atmosphere that leads perfectly into the relationship that is to follow.

This relationship is the heart of the film, and the catalytic function of the Sergeant with his mildy implausible goingson is presumably part of the plot mechanics of Bates' original story.

Unfortunately, the dramatic form exposes the machinery rather too obviously, and the tragic climax comes across with a melodramatic flourish that has no part in such a delicately imagined and tactfully executed little anecdote.

Yet it is handled with enough discretion not to destroy sys conviction of the rest ole whose real interest – despite sexual emphasis of distributors' publicity – lies in a subtle and perceptively realised relationship in which sex is only one element.

Glenda Jackson and Brian Deacon follow the convolutions of their changing roles with tact and intelligence, while Oliver Reed contributes a horribly convincing picture of "the coarse, brutal, almost sub-human Sergeant.

Bates and set on a remote farm in 1942, this unlikely drama might have provoked a few unintentional smirks if it hadn't been so sensitively played by Glenda Jackson and Brian Deacon.