Two for the Road Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Two for the Road Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 9, 2017

As of the writing of this review, Stanley Donen is still going strong (or at least going) at the venerable age of 92, and I for one think it’s more than high time that this fascinating director gets some kind of major retrospective. Donen’s filmography is almost absurdly diverse, even within the confines of the screen musical, the genre where he probably has had the most lasting, if not his only, impact. Donen began his professional life as a dancer and choreographer, two skills that eased his transition into musical films, ultimately joining his friend and (according to Kelly) mentor Gene Kelly, where the two co-choreographed and (according to some reports) actually directed some sequences in early Kelly films like Cover Girl. Donen had already worked on contract for both Columbia and Metro Goldwyn Mayer when he was hired by the venerable Arthur Freed to lend a hand with the film adaptation of the ebullient Leonard Bernstein-Adolph Green-Betty Comden classic On the Town. The innovative use of location photography (showing off New York City a good decade before the perhaps now better remembered use of Manhattan in West Side Story) attracted considerable attention at the time and it wasn’t long before Donen was a bonafide full time member of the legendary Freed Unit.

Donen’s work during the 1950s is a like reading through a laundry list of all time film classics (or at least good to great films with classic sequences), including such iconic titles as Royal Wedding (the film where Fred Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling of a room), Singin' in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (where are you when we really need you, Warner Archives?), and an uncredited assist on Kismet . Moving on to a coterie of other studios, Donen directed such well regarded films as Funny Face, The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees (the latter two co-directed with George Abbott). But during this “freelance” era Donen made the probably wise decision to start branching out from musicals more aggressively than he had before, resulting in such dramatic offerings as Indiscreet.

The 1960s were arguably at least a little more variable in overall quality for Donen, with middling efforts like The Grass Is Greener, Surprise Package and Once More, with Feeling! kicking off the decade. But just mentioning a few of his later films from this decade is enough to establish his then still very vital versatility. Chief among these offerings is a film I’ve previously called the best Hitchcock movie not directed by Hitchcock, 1963’s immortal Charade. Charade turned out to be such a tremendous success that Donen revisited its cheeky thriller ambience in the somewhat less appreciated but still very enjoyable Arabesque, as well as at least tangentially in the decidedly odd film which introduced Dudley Moore and Peter Cook to many American audiences, Bedazzled.

In between Arabesque and Bedazzled Donen helmed one of his most heartfelt offerings, his ode to the tribulations of staying married, Two for the Road. While not greeted with rapturous critical praise or (perhaps more importantly) gigantic box office returns at the time of its release, the film has gone on to achieve what in my estimation is a highly deserved cult status. The film features a wise and often extremely witty screenplay by Frederic Raphael, but perhaps its most notable aspect is its “time traveling” ambience, where the audience is left to fend for themselves (or at least is forced to pay really close attention to hairstyles, as well as fashions and vehicles) to determine when any particular moment is happening.

The uncertainty of what’s happening when tends to put the travails of couple Mark Wallace (Albert Finney) and Joanna Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) into something approaching an almost metaphysical Eternal Now, but what’s fascinating about Raphael’s ingeniously constructed screenplay is how the mere chronology of these events isn’t all that important, since everything kind of refracts back and forth between times like a Boolean prism. While intentionally vignette driven, the film posits the couple making it through the gauntlet of staying married despite the typical distractions of kids and flirtations getting in the way. Raphael offers some wonderfully tart dialogue for the pair and provides some amusing supporting characters, especially William Daniels and Eleanor Bron as a harried couple themselves with a connection to Mark’s past. (A young Jacqueline Bisset is also on hand in what amounts to a glorified cameo.) But this is in essence a “two hander” and it’s graced by the incredible charisma and charm of Finney and Hepburn at the tops of their respective games. The luscious cinematography by Christopher Challis and perfectly romantic score by Henry Mancini add to this film’s wonderful allure.

Two for the Road Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Two for the Road is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Culled from the 20th Century Fox library, this is a wonderfully warm and vivid presentation of the film's often lustrous cinematography by Christopher Challis. Either Challis or Stanley Donen were in love with the then trendy use of zoom lenses, and so there's a perhaps surplus of those kinds of shots, something that can contribute to brief moments of softness, but when things calm down there's a beautifully precise recreation of both the film's gorgeous palette as well as elements of fine detail like the varying fabrics in Hepburn's designer wardrobe (Joanna wears a lot of fashionable clothes in this film). Elements are in excellent condition and grain resolution looks perfectly natural. I've tried to provide a few screenshots that match those in the Two For the Road Blu-ray review of the British Masters of Cinema edition, and to my eyes if these releases aren't absolutely identical, they're pretty darned close. That said, I am evidently a bit more pleased by the overall look of this presentation than Svet was, and am therefore giving it a 4.5.

Two for the Road Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Though this is a little different than the way we typically provide audio specs in our listings, I've added both a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track to this release, though in truth the Mono offering is also 2.0. There's not a huge difference between the two, though Mancini's music arguably gets a bit more breathing room in the stereo offering, as do some ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly on both tracks. Mancini's score is one of the highlights of this film, and the gorgeous theme has become one of Mancini's better known, either with or without the Leslie Bricusse lyric.

Two for the Road Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Fox Movietone Newsreel (480i; 1:45) has footage from the Academy Awards with no actual soundtrack, playing to a Mancini cue from the film.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2:17)


• Audio Commentaries feature one with Stanley Donen and another with Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman.


• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

Two for the Road Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Years ago my wife and I (who are coming up on 25 years together) were out with another couple and the guy was trying to remember how long he and his wife had been married (sound familiar?). His wife reminded him, "Ten years of wedded bliss", to which he responded without missing a beat, "Oh, it seems like a lot more bliss than that." That same somewhat skeptical reaction to the supposed blandishments of marriage informs large swaths of Frederic Raphael's script, but the surprising thing about Two for the Road is ultimately how unabashedly romantic and maybe even optimistic it is. For some reason Two for the Road never quite got the appreciation it deserved back in the day, and it still tends to be oddly underappreciated even within the context of Donen's filmography, but it's a uniquely charming take on relationships. Technical merits are strong, and Two for the Road comes Highly recommended.