Three Into Two Won't Go

This drama is OK, nothing more, but it features a rather depressing storyline. Married man meets, beds, and impregnates a drifter, and we see the impact on his marriage.

Added note: Try to rent the video. When NBC showed the movie on commercial television, the network added additional scenes featuring a social worker looking for the drifter, and the man's co-workers. These scenes are not outtakes from the original movie that NBC restored, but new scenes that NBC filmed and added to make clearer the backgrounds of the characters. They are unnecessary and rather insulting to the audience that the network felt they needed to "improve" the movie.

Perhaps because "Three Into Two Won't Go" was written by a woman (Edna O'Brien), based upon Andrea Newman's novel, it has a distinctly (and cuttingly) female point of view on the after-effects of an extra-marital affair. 43-year-old advertising executive in England is unhappily married to a former teacher; she's anxious over the pricey new home they've bought, and unhappy that she and her husband can't have children (and that he isn't enthusiastic about adoption). He picks up a comely hitchhiker one morning and unassumingly checks into a hotel room with her, but after a second tryst the young woman shows up on his doorstep and befriends the Mrs. Complex character-study begins with some frisky interplay, yet in the second-half becomes a sobering drama of tangled lives. Rod Steiger is so engaging when he's playing a randy sort that it's a bit of a let-down to see the scenario turn into an elongated marital complication (with the scheming hitchhiker pregnant/not pregnant). Still, Rod is wonderful trying to sort out the prickly emotions and feelings of both his wife and his mistress, and both women are intriguing, three-dimensional characters. For those expecting a sexy comedy, the pointed shift toward melodrama won't be a satisfying turn. However, this change in tone does allow for several truths about marriage (and in-laws) to come to the fore, and the final confrontation is downbeat but extremely well-considered. A smart, adult movie about decent people making questionable choices, and how those decisions touch everyone else. **1/2 from ****

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

I saw this film back in the early 70's and I was mesmerised by Judy Geeson. For me it captured the clandestine nature of Rod Steigers irrepressible obsession with the young and extremely sexy hitch hiker, played by Geeson.

You couldn't help feel a little sorry for the wife, played brilliantly by Claire Bloom. I was really disappointed to see that the original cut may have been lost and there is little chance of it being released on DVD.

I defy anyone who saw the film, and it's strong message not to be equally absorbed by the three main character performances, and I would have loved to have seen it again, if nothing else for a purely nostalgic reason.

Going back in time, some 35 years.

A real classic.

It's so seventies. I can even smell it like before the rain. A silent cold war that brought back all my life before my eyes again. And in the end everything goes up in flames like a volcano. It's real, because I watched it before and it was no movie. Brilliant, exceptional performance. And Claire Bloom. There I must stop. I am too small for such a great show. She does not need to talk even. Her eyes are saying a thousand words. Absolutely wonderful. This is the fifteenth film where I had the privilege of watching her performance. This is the fifteenth time where she is a completely different person. Even her voice is changed. Terry, Lady Anne, Barsine, Theodora ... and down on earth again with such pain, kindness and anger. Claire Bloom ...