The Six-Sided Triangle is a 1963 British short film written and directed by Christopher Miles and produced with Sara Bennett. It parodies a favourite theme of the cinema - the eternal triangle - and shows how six different 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. It was a seminal short film which broke through the Rank/ABPC distribution cartels and was theatrically released by British Lion and world-wide by Lion International, and nominated for an Academy Award.
Plot
Using the eternal triangle as the main theme, the film shows how six different 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. The film also parodies the well known styles of the prominent directors and stars of each country at the time the film was made.
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?’ seems to cover most emotions until a surprise ending.
Cast
Sarah Miles as the Wife
Nicol Williamson as the Lover
Bill Meilen as the Husband
Production
The idea for "The Six-sided Triangle’ came to Christopher Miles when studying at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques in Paris. As it became clear to Miles that when the same script was given to several film students of different nationalities, they all ended up directing very different films, clearly showing the influence of a director’s interpretation of a script.
After making a short film ‘A Vol d’Oiseau’ with other film students in Paris in the holidays, Miles showed it along with the script for "The Six-sided Triangle" to the man in charge of distributing short films, Beresford Seligman, at British Lion in London. 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.
The Boulting Brothers helped Miles form a company by taking over a defunct one in British Lion files - The Archers - once owned by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which became Milesian Film Productions Ltd and later trades under Milesian Lion.
The director’s sister Sarah had agreed to play the wife in one of her first films, against the wishes of her then agent Robin Fox as Miles was unproven as a director, but having already made some home movies with her brother years before she decided to sign her brother’s contract. Nicol Williamson, who was then with her in a play at the Royal Court Theatre, agreed to play the lover, with Bill Meilen completing cast.
The co-producer’s mother, and another friendly investor put up £2,000, but the investor for the rest reneged on his contract two weeks before shooting, leaving a £3,000 short fall which Miles had to fill by putting up his small Paris flat as collateral to the Midland Bank.
The underground World Wide Studios, in Chancery Lane, London WC2 agreed to a six day shoot, and would help complete the crewing, which in 1963 was completely unionised which meant having to include four people on the sound equipment. 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.