Three Into Two Won't Go

I watched this film recently for the first time in over 30 years and was very pleasantly surprised. I remembered a film that caught the mood and feel of Britain in the mid 1960s without falling into the 'Swinging Britain' clichés that so many other films thought they had to propagate, my memory proved correct. Those who feel that this is like a TV play are not entirely wrong but while Andrea Newman was to become famous for risqué TV drama, this film is more in the tradition of the 'kitchen-sink'films such as 'Saturday Night And Sunday Morning' but with an emphasis on middle-class rather than working-class life. Rod Steiger is excellent as the middle-aged angst-ridden lead, unhappily married to a repressed and apparently barren wife (Claire Bloom). The onset of the 'Technological Revolution' is the the backdrop for the drama in which old values and certainties are challenged. This is the stage for the central character played by Judy Geeson, a role which at the time was a shocking departure from the typical prim behaviour of contemporary heroines. The reversal of roles, with the girl rating her conquests in a little-black-book was a precursor to the Feminist movement and was criticised at the time for promoting promiscuity among young girls. The irony of these criticisms is to be seen in both Claire Bloom's and Peggy Ashcroft's characters who are both acceptingly dissatisfied. Peter Hall made few films and on this evidence that is a great shame. Steiger is exemplary and wholly credible showing why he was so highly regarded