THREE INTO TWO WON'T GO

UK, 1968, 92 minutes, Colour.
Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, Judy Geeson, Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Rogers, Elizabeth Spriggs.
Directed by Peter Hall.

Three Into Two Won't Go is a study of contemporary marriage and a rather caustic and pessimistic study at that. Peter Hall (formerly director of the Royal Shakespeare Company of Stratford-on-Avon) directs the film whose screenplay is by feminist Irish novelist, Edna O'Brien. (The 1963 film Girl with Green Eyes showed Miss O'Brien's preoccupation with the rights of women, her antagonism towards men and the domination of Irish attitudes and the Catholic Church.) An Irony of this film is that the nine year old marriage between stars, Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom, broke up soon after the completion of the film.

Some critics have found the film somewhat cold and dispassionate. However, it is an excellent study of an unsuccessful marriage and the amoral, 'modern', marriage-breaker and it is worth seeing and discussing. The fine acting of the two stars 1s supported by one of Judy Geeson's best performances and by performances of noted English actors associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Rogers and Elizabeth Spriggs.

1. The film builds up quickly, relying an small details to convey character and communicate atmosphere
- the hitch-hiking girl making the driver come back to where she is standing to pick her up. Steven ae the type who picks girls up, well-known at the hotel.
- The love-making, posing as a loving couple, yet the point is that this is hollow and they are merely goinq through the notions of union: the girl's diary and classification of men.
- Steven, as deceitful but looking resources to cope with his situation.
- The girl dominating the situation and Steven, as she threatens to scream in the hotel, and as she takes a job and her uniform at the hotel.
- The nudity: as the way the girl chooses to make herself attractive and exciting, also her 'freedom' and 'lack of hypocrisy' as she runs naked down the stairs.

2. Steven and Frances' marriages
- appears friendly as he arrives; the atmosphere of moving house.
- soon degenerates into conventional bickering,
- then to Frances' frigidity and her driving Steven to others.
- Frances' desire for children, even adoption.
- her attempt to make the new home a tie for the marriage.
- Frances as devoted and wronged and Frances as cold and irritable.
- the role of Frances' mother - living with them
- sent to the institution
- visited by Frances
- resenting her own husband’s behaviour (the influence of this on Frances).

3. The girl and the 'freedom' of the 19 year-old:
- turning up as she likes,
- not embarrassed at arriving at Steven 's home, talking with Frances and helping her paint,
- the manoeuvre of -tike pregnancy; lies about the hotel-manager,
- pleasing herself whom she would be nice to or nasty to,
- she takes over Steven at his office,
- she forces Frances to negotiate with Steven at the office instead of at home,
- she drives Frances' mother at home,
- she forces them all out of their own home: note the effect of the endings after driving them out she sits and watches pop-songs on T.V., then gets her haversack and goes on her way to start all over again.

4. Thus the film is a version of the eternal triangle, but set in the bitter mood of to-day's attempt at love, a 1960's version of the picaresque, the stranger who enters people's lives, changes them all and leaves. In this futile attempt to bridge the generation gap, the stranger wins and leaves only the husk of a marriage.