{"id":30358,"date":"2013-03-28T11:18:02","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T18:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/?p=30358"},"modified":"2021-01-01T12:59:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-01T19:59:15","slug":"two-for-the-road-1967","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/?p=30358","title":{"rendered":"Two For the Road (1967)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>&#8220;That&#8217;s marriage for you.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Poster.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Poster-191x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"191\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-30361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Poster-191x300.jpg 191w, https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Poster-81x128.jpg 81w, https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Poster.jpg 481w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Synopsis:<\/strong><br \/>\nAn unhappy wife (Audrey Hepburn) reflects back on her troubled marriage to an architect (Albert Finney).\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p>\n<strong>Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Albert Finney Films<\/li>\n<li>Audrey Hepburn Films<\/li>\n<li>Flashback Films<\/li>\n<li>Jacqueline Bisset Films<\/li>\n<li>Marital Problems<\/li>\n<li>Road Trip<\/li>\n<li>Romantic Comedy<\/li>\n<li>Stanley Donen Films<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Response to Peary\u2019s Review: <\/strong><br \/>\nPeary writes that this Stanley Donen-directed romantic comedy (written by Frederic Raphael, who also scripted John Schlesinger&#8217;s <em>Darling<\/em> and Stanley Kubrick&#8217;s <em>Eyes Wide Shut<\/em>) is a &#8220;cult film for romantics&#8221;, &#8220;many [of whom] have been known to become emotionally attached to it&#8221;. He notes that &#8220;while watching Finney and Hepburn at various times in their relationship&#8221;, we &#8220;can examine their marriage from the outside&#8221;, and clearly &#8220;see the road-as-life and trip-as-marriage metaphors&#8221;. He argues that &#8220;we come to like these two people more than they do themselves&#8221;, and to &#8220;understand why their marriage has lasted <em>and<\/em> will survive&#8221;. He states that &#8220;they are a great couple, flaws and all&#8221;, and refers to them as &#8220;one of the few screen couples since William Powell and Myrna Loy who make marriage seem exciting&#8221;, given that &#8220;even their squabbling is romantic&#8221;. He argues that Raphael&#8217;s script possesses &#8220;excellent&#8221; dialogue, and that &#8220;he smoothly blends comedy&#8230; painful drama&#8230; and sentimentality&#8221;. Finally, he notes that &#8220;Donen does a good job handling the changes in tone, except when he attempts some speeded-up slapstick during the film&#8217;s least successful sequence, in which Hepburn and Finney travel with super-punctual William Daniels, his wife, Eleanor Bron, and their bratty daughter&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, I&#8217;m not nearly as enamored with this <em>nouvelle vague<\/em>-inspired cult classic as Peary (and many others) are. I&#8217;ve seen it twice now &#8212; once many years ago, and again just recently &#8212; and still find myself unable to engage with either the characters or their travails. While Raphael&#8217;s screenplay was indeed innovative for the time, it now seems like merely an excuse for cinematic trickery, with form trumping content; we focus so much on watching Hepburn&#8217;s Joanna and Finney&#8217;s Mark shifting between various eras of their relationship (coded primarily by Hepburn&#8217;s haircuts and outfits) that we lose all sense of why we should care about these individuals to begin with. Indeed, I disagree with Peary&#8217;s assertion that &#8220;we come to like these two people&#8221;, given that we never learn who, exactly, they are, other than partners in an endlessly contentious marriage; meanwhile, the specifics of their livelihoods &#8212; including an unlikely encounter with a wealthy European couple who just happen to be looking for a sharp young architect like Finney &#8212; further strain the film&#8217;s credibility. Ultimately, at risk of sounding like a philistine, I find myself agreeing most with <a href=\"http:\/\/movies.nytimes.com\/movie\/review?res=9904E3D81738E53BBC4051DFB266838C679EDE\">Bosley Crowther&#8217;s review for the NY Times<\/a>, where he argues that the film &#8220;doesn&#8217;t tell us very much about marriage and life, other than the old romantic axiom that lovers are likelier to be happy when poor than when rich.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yet clearly <em>Two for the Road<\/em> resonates on a deeply personal level for Peary &#8212; and a quick glance at IMDb&#8217;s message boards and user reviews reveals that quite a few others feel the same way. In his first <em>Cult Movies<\/em> book, Peary relates an anecdote of going to see this film while on a road trip heading towards college for the first time, and how it &#8220;was a revelation to a college freshmen who hadn&#8217;t known there was life after high school&#8221;. In this essay, he offers an in-depth analysis of sections from Raphael&#8217;s script, arguing that &#8220;no contribution [to the film] is more significant than the screenplay&#8221;, and that it&#8217;s &#8220;a writer&#8217;s movie&#8221;. He points out how the script is rare in paying &#8220;as much attention&#8230; to gestures as&#8230; to dialogue&#8221;, and, given that it was written specifically for the screen, in specifying &#8220;every effect, movement and motivation&#8221; in cinematic terms. Indeed, reading Peary&#8217;s analysis provides me with better insight as to why it&#8217;s so critically lauded; yet while it may be true, as Peary writes, that &#8220;Joanna and Mark are emotional mosaics of the problems and roadblocks we each may bring to a relationship: the selfishness, the intolerance, the egotism, the misguided values, the impulsiveness, the thoughtlessness, the infidelity&#8221;, my inability to care about these particular characters makes it difficult for me to glean as much from the film as others apparently can. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Redeeming Qualities and Moments: <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Audrey Hepburn as Joanna (voted Best Actress of the Year in Peary&#8217;s <em>Alternate Oscars<\/em>)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Hepburn.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Hepburn.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"304\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-30360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Hepburn.png 720w, https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Hepburn-128x54.png 128w, https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Hepburn-300x126.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/li>\n<li>Fine cinematography<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Cinematography.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Cinematography.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"304\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-30359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Cinematography.png 720w, https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Cinematography-128x54.png 128w, https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Two-for-the-Road-Cinematography-300x126.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/li>\n<li>Henry Mancini&#8217;s score<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Must See? <\/strong><br \/>\nNo, though it&#8217;s worth a one-time look, and may even become a personal favorite &#8212; it&#8217;s just not mine. Listed as one of the Best Films of the Year in <em>Alternate Oscars<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Links: <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0062407\/\">IMDb entry<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/movies.nytimes.com\/movie\/review?res=9904E3D81738E53BBC4051DFB266838C679EDE\">NY Times Original Review<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.combustiblecelluloid.com\/classic\/twoforroad.shtml\">Combustible Celluloid <\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dvdtalk.com\/dvdsavant\/s1779two.html\">DVD Savant Review<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeout.com\/london\/film\/two-for-the-road\">Time Out Capsule Review<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s marriage for you.&#8221; Synopsis: An unhappy wife (Audrey Hepburn) reflects back on her troubled marriage to an architect (Albert Finney). Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors: Albert Finney Films Audrey Hepburn Films Flashback Films Jacqueline Bisset Films Marital Problems Road Trip Romantic Comedy Stanley Donen Films Response to Peary\u2019s Review: Peary writes that this Stanley Donen-directed romantic comedy (written by Frederic Raphael, who also scripted John Schlesinger&#8217;s Darling and Stanley Kubrick&#8217;s Eyes Wide Shut) is a &#8220;cult film for romantics&#8221;,&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/?p=30358\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-responses-to-peary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30358"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61024,"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30358\/revisions\/61024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmfanatic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}