Two for the Road **** (1967, Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron) – Classic Movie Review 5681

‘If you want to be a duchess, be a duchess. If you want to make love, hat’s off.’ – Mark Wallace (Albert Finney).

Producer-director Stanley Donen’s seemingly lightweight 1967 romantic comedy Two for the Road is utterly charming, ingratiating and witty, and often wise, clever and penetrating too.

Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn show off their talent in their prime as a British architect, Mark Wallace, and his wife Joanna looking back on their lives as they drive through picturesque France. At a restaurant they ask each other what kind of people don’t talk over a meal and answer ‘married people’. Hepburn and Finney are seen at pretty much on their best form.

The film drives back to the couple meeting on the road when Joanna is in a touring women’s choir and Mark is a struggling architect, and the route of their troubled ten-year marriage motors along from courtship, to marriage, to infidelity and to parenthood.

Director Donen has the measure of Frederic Raphael’s acerbic, cynical, world-weary screenplay and Henry Mancini’s music contributes to the mood, as do Christopher Challis’s cinematography and Willy Holt’s production designs.

Heading a sweet character actor cast, Eleanor Bron enjoys a meaty supporting role as snooty Cathy Manchester.

Also in the cast are William Daniels, Claude Dauphin, Nadia Gray, Georges Descrières, Gabrielle Middelton, Jacqueline Bisset, Judy Cornwell, Irène Hilda, Dominique Joos, Kathy Chelimsky, Roger Dann, Karyn Balm, Carol van Dyke, Olga Georges-Picot, Yves Barsacq, Libby Morris and Patricia Viterbo.

Raphael was Oscar nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen and for a Bafta for Best British Screenplay.

Albert Finney (9 May 1936 – 7 February 2019) made his film debut with The Entertainer (1960), and went on to become a new star with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Tom Jones (1963), and be nominated for five Oscars.

RIP Stanley Donen (1924–2019).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5681

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com