Three Into Two Won't Go (1969)
Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), directed by Peter Hall.
We have a married couple who are not happy and who are never going to be happy. Drop in a free spirited, sexually aggressive young woman and what is going to happen?
It has good features without being an outstanding film. I saw bits of it on TV decades ago but it has never been available on home video until Kino's recent Blu-ray release. It has been on my want-list for so long that I am obligated to give it a review.
Several themes that might have been separate stage plays are here shuffled together:
The unhappy marriage, their pain from childlessness.
The generational clash of old standards vs new morals, or lack thereof.
The thriller aspect of a philandering husband who finally picked up the wrong hitchhiker. She has a hold on him; how crazy is she and how far will she go?
We have a shot-on-location slice of 1969 with a distinguished cast:
Rod Steiger (Duck, You Sucker (1971), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Jubal (1956), Waterloo (1970)). He's a man with testosterone overload whose traveling job gives him plenty of opportunity for philandering. We understand that much, but is there more he's seeking? To be a father, to break out of stifling normalcy?
Claire Bloom (Richard III (1955), The Haunting (1963), The Outrage (1964), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)) always has a mysterious aspect and uses it to advantage here. What does the wife know, how much does she suspect? Might she be thinking: this is my chance to get out?
Judy Geeson (10 Rillington Place (1971)) at age 21 has that British dolly bird appeal so popular among 1960s models and actresses. But she is also mysterious: what exactly is she up to? Does she even know? Has she had time to figure it out or is she being destructive just because she can? Geeson does full, unselfconscious nudity here just when it was becoming allowed in film.
Peggy Ashcroft (The 39 Steps (1935), A Passage to India (1984)) is the wife's mother, representing a still older generation, complicating the collision of morals. The character has early dementia, which we might take as a symbol of the older standards passing away.
Steiger and Bloom were married at this time, something of a power couple. They had just done The Illustrated Man (1969) the same year.
Photographed by Walter Lassally -- A Taste of Honey (1961), Tom Jones (1963), Heat and Dust (1983)).
Available on Blu-ray from Kino. It includes a drastically altered TV-cut of the film, which I did not watch.
The commentary track by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson deals more with the actors and the times than the plot itself.
Rod Steiger was infamous for cringeworthy overacting in his later years; see The Amityville Horror (1979). They say it was his way of breaking out of severe mental depression.
