55 years of the Two for the Road
On April 27, 1967, the British romantic dramedy "Two for the Road" premiered in New York. Directed by Stanley Donen ("Singing in the Rain").
It is believed that this film, if it does not reflect some details of the director's biography, then some of his personal feelings formed the basis of the script.
The fact that the main role in the film will be played by Audrey Hepburn was not in doubt for Stanley Donen from the very beginning. Prior to this film, he already had a successful experience with this great Actress on the films "Funny Face" and "Charade". True, already during the filming it became clear that Audrey was pregnant, and Donen had an idea whether to replace her with Julie Christie. But Audrey had a miscarriage, and the need for a replacement disappeared by itself.
In June 1967, Stanley Donen's film "Two for the Road" was presented to the guests and participants of the international film festival in San Sebastian (Spain), where it was awarded the main prize - the Golden Seashell.
In early 1968, "Two for the Road" received two nominations for the American Golden Globe Awards, but did not win either. In the nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical Film, Audrey Hepburn lost to Anne Bancroft, who played the female lead in Mike Nichols' "The Graduate". The American Film Academy nominated Stanley Donen's film in only one category - Best Original Screenplay, but the matter was limited to the nomination.
Frederic Raphael's screenplay for Stanley Donen's "Two for the Road" was also nominated for a British BAFTA Award. But here, too, Donen's film failed.
The opinions of leading film critics about Stanley Donen's film "Two for the Road" diverged. The well-known American critic Pauline Kael devoted a very caustic and sarcastic review to the film, in which, among other things, she "rides" Audrey Hepburn, writing: "The script calls for Hepburn to be very young part of the time, and it is rather painful watching an actress try to look young when we remember how she looked when she was (she competes not only with our memories but with television-movie reminders). Hepburn seems too old for Finney, not because she's that much older but because we've been seeing her steadily in movies for seventeen years (Finney has only been in a few movies scattered over eight years). This, too, affects the meaning of the movies, pushes it further into the story of an infantile male."
A few remarks about the messiness and intricacies of the film's plot were made in his review by the usually peevish film reviewer for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther. But he ended his review with the following conclusion: "However, there are some precious moments of romantic charm in this bitter account of domestic discord amid surroundings that should inspire nothing but delight. And so one must seize upon them for the entertainment that is to be had, and endure the tedium of much of the picture."
But Roger Ebert, in his review from 1967, when he had not yet acquired the reputation of a guru of American film criticism, rated the film with the maximum 4 stars in his system and included it in his list of "Great Movies". In this review, he noted: "Donen knows what he is doing, and does it very well. This is a slick, entirely professional, very smooth movie – but it is just because Donen and his associates are seasoned craftsmen that they never stoop to the obvious. They make “Two for the Road” two things: a Hollywood-style romance between beautiful people, and an honest story about recognizable human beings. I'd call it “A Man and a Woman” for grown-ups." - I would like to note in connection with such a characterization of Ebert that, if Claude Lelouch's film "Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman)" was shown in Soviet cinemas, then Soviet moviegoers did not get to know Stanley Donen's film, at least until the beginning of perestroika.
The following data speaks about the assessment of the film by ordinary moviegoers. With a budget of 4 million dollars (according to some reports - 5.08 million dollars), the film's fees amounted, according to various sources, from 7.2 to 12 million dollars. 56% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film a score of 8 to 10. Given this indicator and the above, the rating of Stanley Donen's film "Two on the Road" according to FilmGourmand version was 7,944, which allowed it to take 814th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
