Two for the Road

Hollywood has never given us a smarter, more elegant, or more touching movie about the making, mauling, and mending of a marriage than director Stanley Donen and writer Frederic Raphael’s sublime seriocomic portrait of a couple driving across Europe at three different, precarious points in their relationship. Will the stars of Two for the Road stay together or disintegrate? Are they a happy twosome facing a rough road, or a mismatch finally realizing their mutual error? Or is marriage really just about the journey itself? Audrey Hepburn, heart-stoppingly gorgeous but also giving the strongest, most adult performance of her career, and Albert Finney, ideal as her loutish charmer of a husband, are the height of late-’60s glamour. And Henry Mancini’s lush score, repeated in bittersweet variations, is a masterpiece. But what makes the movie endure is its timeless understanding that it’s the little things — mere moments of rancor or misjudgment or generosity — that can wreck or rebuild a relationship. Buy, don’t rent; you’ll want to revisit this every year or two. EXTRAS A thoughtful, thorough commentary track from Donen.