Three Into Two Won’t Go *** (1969, Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, Judy Geeson, Peggy Ashcroft) – Classic Movie Review 10,443

Director Peter Hall’s 1969 British drama Three into Two Won’t Go stars Rod Steiger as Steve Howard, a businessman whose unsteady marriage to his wife Frances (Claire Bloom) is tipped over into chaos by a sultry young hitchhiker, Ella Patterson (Judy Geeson), in this convincingly played and incisively written anatomy of a relationship breakdown.

In the story, Ella (Geeson) improbably thinks a night in a hotel with Steve (Steiger) is enough to allow her to move in on the couple’s home. The two top-billed stars (then also married in real life) make a terrific job of acting out a marriage on the rocks, Geeson is a believably willful sex-tease and Peggy Ashcroft is perfect as Bloom’s waspish mother, Belle.

National Theatre director Peter Hall’s strength is with the acting and attention to script and detail. Edna O’Brien brings a touch of class to the screenplay from the novel by Andrea Newman, writer of Bouquet of Barbed Wire.

It runs runs 92 minutes. Beware the reshot and re-edited TV version at 100 minutes. Scenes are trimmed or cut, and new scenes added. No original cast member is in the new scenes, filmed in Hollywood by a different director and crew. Peter Hall attacked Universal for this, which they also did to Secret Ceremony (1968) and The Night of the Following Day (1969). Universal then stopped this idea.

Also in the cast are Paul Rogers, Lynn Farleigh, Elizabeth Spriggs, Sheila Allen and Diana Webster.

Three into Two Won’t Go is directed by Peter Hall, runs 92 minutes, is made by Julian Blaustein Productions, is released by Rank Film Distributors (1969) (UK) and Universal Pictures (1969) (US), is written by Edna O’Brien, based on the the novel by Andrea Newman, shot in Technicolor by Walter Lassally, produced by Julian Blaustein, scored by Francis Lai and designed by Peter Murton.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,443

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