Distributor:
Universal Certificate: PG Director: Frank Launder, Sydney Gilliat Cast: Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling, Viriginia Maskell, Richard
Attenborough, Raymond Huntley, John Le Mesurier, Kenneth Griffith Extras: No Easter Eggs: No
Rightly
regarded as containing a classic
Peter Sellers performance Only
Two Can Play could hardly fail
to be a great movie – based on
a novel by Kingsley Amis (That
Uncertain Feeling) and scripted
by actor turned writer/director
Bryan Forbes and produced and
directed by two of British
Cinema’s best film-makers
(probably somewhat forgotten
these days but Launder and
Gilliatt contributed some fine
movies in the war years and
after including the likes of
Waterloo Road and Green For
Danger).
Sellers
plays a bored librarian living in a sleepy Welsh town, married and with
two young children, living in a run down bed sit type apartment block;
Desperate to add a bit of spice to his otherwise mundane life he drifts
into an affair with a councillors wife (played by Mia Zetterling).
A great study in barely
suppressed lust Sellers finds himself assailed on all sides by sex –
from catching a glimpse of the woman downstairs getting changed to being
pushed up against a buxom secretary on the bus to work.
Containing
as many dramatic moments as it does comedic ones Only Two Can Pay is a piece
of pure class, full of appearances from great British character actors
(including Kenneth Griffith who was a regular in Seller’s movies in the
early sixties, the always fantastic Richard Attenborough and Sgt Wilson
himself John Le Mesurier). Priced just right as they are Universal’s best
of British range is well worth adding to your collection.
