Triple Cross (1966 film)

Triple Cross

DVD cover
Directed by Terence Young
Produced by Jacques-Paul Bertrand
Screenplay by René Hardy
William Marchant (additional dialogue)
Based on The Eddie Chapman Story [as told to] Frank Owen
1953 novel
by Eddie Chapman
Eddie Chapman
Starring Christopher Plummer
Romy Schneider
Trevor Howard
Music by Georges Garvarentz
Cinematography Henri Alekan
Edited by Roger Dwyre
Production
company
Cineurop Company
Distributed by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Release dates
  • 9 December 1966 (1966-12-09)

(France)

  • 19 July 1967 (1967-07-19)

(United States)

Running time
 140 min.(UK)
126 min.(US)
Country United Kingdom
France

Triple Cross is a 1966 Anglo-French co-produced film directed by Terence Young and produced by Jacques-Paul Bertrand. It was released in France in December 1966 as La Fantastique histoire vraie d'Eddie Chapman, but elsewhere in Europe and the United States in 1967 as Terence Young's Triple Cross. It was filmed in Eastman Color, print by Technicolor.

Triple Cross was based loosely on the real-life story of Eddie Chapman, believed by the Nazis to be their top spy in Great Britain, although he was actually an MI5 double agent known as "Zigzag". The title of the film comes from Chapman's signature to mark he was freely transmitting by radio, a Morse code XXX. Another meaning of the title "Triple Cross" becomes clear in the final scene of the film. Chapman, sitting at a bar, is asked who he was really working for. In reply, he raises his glass in salute to his reflection in the mirror.

Triple Cross is the second pairing of Terence Young and actress Claudine Auger. She was the leading James Bond girl in Thunderball (1965), which Young also directed.

Plot

Early in the Second World War, safecracker Eddie Chapman (Christopher Plummer) blows open a wall safe. Outside, a car is backfiring repeatedly and a marching band is passing, which mask the blast. Chapman casually removes some jewels from the safe and examines them for the choicest items. He leaves a card in the safe complimenting its owners for being victims of the "Gelignite Gang". The gang pulls off a series of heists before Chapman is caught in Jersey and imprisoned there. After eight months, he sees German soldiers landing outside the prison and demands to see their commandant.

Chapman offers to work as a spy for the Germans, who are deeply skeptical of his motives. They eventually fake his execution and smuggle him into occupied France where, working closely with his handler, Col. Baron von Grunen (Yul Brynner), he is trained to be a spy. Eventually, he is dropped back in England, but goes straight to the police and eventually to the British military. He shows him his identity card and several of the radio frequencies that the Germans were using. The British officials believe Chapman was executed in Jersey, but since some of the frequencies are known to them already as German, they reluctantly negotiate with him. In return for working as a double agent, he demands a full pardon for his crimes and £5,000, as well as a war commendation.

The Germans radio a message ordering Chapman to blow up the Vickers aircraft factory. The British let him demolish part of the factory to convince the Germans that Chapman's cover has not been blown. He is sent back to Germany where he receives the Iron Cross, but manages to return to London at the end of the war, to collect his compensation.

Cast

Production

In his autobiography, Christopher Plummer said that Chapman was to have been a technical adviser on the film but the French authorities would not allow him in the country because he was still wanted over an alleged plot to kidnap the Sultan of Morocco.[1]

Reception

Reviews were generally lukewarm for Triple Cross. The review for Variety thought Plummer's performance was listless and the plot hackneyed. "Though based on a true story of a British safecracker who worked as a double spy during the Second World War, Triple Cross is made in the standard spy pattern of having him a ladies' man, fast with his mitts, glib and shrewd, and with overloaded and obvious suspense bits thrown in to rob this of the verisimilitude needed to give it a more original fillip."[2]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Plummer 2008, p. 432.
  2. ↑ "Review:'Triple Cross'." Variety, 1967.

Bibliography

  • Plummer, Christopher. In Spite of Myself: A Memoir. New York: Afred A. Knopf, 2008. ISBN 978-0-307-39680-8.
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