Two for the Road

1967 "They make something wonderful out of being alive!"
7.4| 1h52m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 27 April 1967 Released
Producted By: Stanley Donen Films
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

On the way to a party, a British couple dissatisfied with their marriage recall the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

Genre

Drama, Comedy, Romance

Watch Online

Two for the Road (1967) is currently not available on any services.

Director

Stanley Donen

Production Companies

Stanley Donen Films

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime.
Watch Now
Two for the Road Videos and Images
  • Top Credited Cast
  • |
  • Crew

Two for the Road Audience Reviews

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!
Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.
Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Dan1863Sickles TWO FOR THE ROAD is a tepid, uninspired, faintly depressing "comedy" about a married couple on the edge of divorce who drive through France reminiscing about the past ten years of their marriage. It's like a very, very watered down version of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, minus the tragedy, minus the pain, minus the insights, minus the truth. Yet TWO FOR THE ROAD began life as something very different. Originally entitled "the Big Freakout," the original screenplay meant to showcase the return of screen darling Audrey Hepburn as a fiery vixen of revolution and social change. It was only when Hepburn herself read the script and began having terrible nightmares that the bland, marriage on the rocks story was concocted by studio hacks. The story opens with a preteen Audrey, squatting to urinate on the grave of Winston Churchill, who raped her mother while touring the East End during the darkest days of the London Blitz. Drooling and sneering, a stodgy MP listens to her story, calls her a liar, and then clubs her with an umbrella. Audrey is sentenced to ten years in a sadistic girls reform school. After a montage of lesbian sex, gang violence, and field hockey (all inter-cut with a scorching live UK performance of "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets) Audrey emerges from prison at the edge of womanhood, ready (as she puts it) for "loads of men, loads of fun, and loads of destruction!"Albert Finney first enters the film as a young Oxford lad presenting a paper on youth unrest in Britain. When a kindly professor suggests that the lad needs "street research" to "sharpen his insights" the gullible Finney immediately rents a cheap motorcar and goes cruising across the British countryside. The first person he meets is Hepburn, thumbing for a ride in the pouring rain while singing "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Beatles at the top her lungs. Finney and Hepburn immediately connect, having steamy sex in a barn to the sounds of "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones. But when they wake up in the morning, their car is gone! Hepburn claims to know of a fortune in jewels buried in a nearby churchyard, and she leads Finney on a desperate scavenger hunt that swiftly leads to cannibalism, necrophilia, grave robbing, and blues wailing at a local club, where Audrey sits in as vocalist with the original 1964 lineup of the Animals, reunited for a smoking set that includes "Boom Boom," "House of the Rising Sun," "I'm Crying," and "Send You Back to Walker." At the end of the set, Audrey says quietly, "I died many years ago," blowing her brains out with a concealed pistol just as the police arrive. Back at Oxford, Albert Finney presents his paper on teen violence and street crime to a standing ovation and top marks. Wandering out into the yard, he sees a beautiful wild flower growing up between the bricks, the spirit of Audrey Hepburn set free at last.
lasttimeisaw TWO FOR THE ROAD is an authentic road movie, with opening credits of miscellaneous traffic signs bode the marital turbulence of a couple, the architect Mark Wallace (Finney) and his wife Joanna (Hepburn), who has been married for twelve years, and through the haphazard narrative jump-cuts, as the title suggests, the film presents them in a continuously mobile fashion, mostly in flashbacks, whether they are hitchhiking, carpooling with another married couple (including a fast-forwarding sight-seeing in Chantilly), or later they can afford to travel on their own, their trips in the magnificent European land evokes an evident whiff of lyricism intermingled with their personal romances and crises. Directed by the legendary Stanley Donen, and enabled by Frederic Raphael's wickedly astringent script, with golden maxim like "Marriage is when a woman asks a man to take off his pajamas because she wants to send it to the laundry." or "I still want a child, I just don't want that child."; and more strikingly, Donen discards the traditional linear account, instead he disarrays the over-one-decade time-span with sharp editing to hop erratically onto their various en route encounters and happenings, the film essays a full spectrum appraisal of what could happen during a relationship, from the budding romance, the unrestrained passion, the blithe squabbling alters into the bitter snide, the fatigue of bringing up a child, the extramarital affairs and finally spilling the beans of their dissatisfactions with blatant betrayal. Donen does go out on a limb to test the patience of its audience in this connubial fable. While the narrative can be problematic to grasp at times, for first-time viewers sometimes can barely be aware of which period our two protagonists are in the story, the movie's composition is as frequently changed as Ms. Hepburn's wardrobe, all too dashing and hasty to comprehend. The weightier challenge now falls on the shoulders of the two leads, which thankfully turns out to be truly amazing, despite of their seven-year age difference (in a rare case the woman is older), the Hepburn-Finney (aka. the bitch vs. the bastard) pair generates a waft of tangy chemistry on screen. There are good times when they are young and free, succumb to involuntary infatuation which can be viscerally affecting; in the bad times, they quarrel, dis each other. Hepburn contrives to give off a presence of corporeal concreteness instead of her more goddess-like persona, she is tormented by her ingrained insecurity and although we can tell youth is slowly eluding from her countenance, she holds on well throughout the varying phases due to her immaculate flair and unblemished self- respect projected in Joanna. Finney's Mark is flippant, volatile, flirty, even verges on male chauvinism, reeks of gentleman-like snobbishness, but his inner child never grow up during all these years.A young and gorgeous Jacqueline Bisset has a five-minute role in it, (auspiciously heralds her reunion with Finney in John Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO 1984, 5/10), but the most joyous one in its merger supporting cast is William Daniels' Howard, the husband of Mark's ex-lover, he is a rigorous efficiency expert, surely the best expedition companion one can ever find if fairness is all you care. TWO FOR THE ROAD makes good use of the irrevocable fluidity of road-trip as a metaphor of one's tumultuous marriage journey, and it also shows audience a different Audrey Hepburn under the same dignified decorum, another good reason that the film should not be obliterated from a younger age group.
bkoganbing Two For The Road was the last and least of the films that Audrey Hepburn did with Stanley Donen. It's a matter of taste, but I don't think it is anywhere as good as either Funny Face or Charade.The film is the story of the marriage of Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn told in jigsaw puzzle style, disjointed at different select times of their marriage and what they go through. You date it by the different hairstyles that Audrey Hepburn has and by the various cars that they drive. They're always on the road and if you know from cars and from women's hairstyle trends than you can follow the film a whole lot easier. Me, I'm not an expert in either.Some parts are quite memorable and the best scenes are with another married couple, Eleanor Bron and William Daniels and the little brat monster from hell that they're raising. Bron used to be involved with Finney and she'd like to keep some kind of tie there. But as parents the two are absolute flops, they're very liberal types who don't believe in disciplining their little sugar plum. In fact Audrey has to take a hand in there when the situation becomes intolerable.According to The Films Of Audrey Hepburn, Finney's part was originally schedule for Michael Caine. I could certainly have seen him in the role. I don't think the cinematic jigsaw was necessary. It would have been a better film just done as a straight linear narrative. Still fans of Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney should be pleased.
kenjha This film examines the troubled ten-year marriage of a tempestuous couple, moving about in time and place to paint a complete picture. Initially, the chronological jumping around is disconcerting and confusing. Eventually, however, the episodes add up to something interesting, providing an absorbing portrait of the rise and fall of a love affair. Donen goes a bit overboard with his cinematic tricks, trying too hard to be chic. Hepburn and Finney are excellent as the sparring couple. The scenes involving their friends (Bron and Daniels) are quite amusing. The latter couple has what is probably the most obnoxious, spoiled child ever put on film.