Today would have been film legend Audrey Hepburn’s 85th birthday. Everyone loves Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Funny Face, My Fair Lady, Sabrina, Charade and Roman Holiday (for which she won an Oscar). I love all of those movies, but my favorite Audrey Hepburn film remains wildly underrated and under-appreciated.
Two for the Road (1967) arguably produced Audrey Hepburn’s best, bravest and most mature performances ever put on film, and yet it is one of her least famous movies.
Directed by Stanley Donen, who also directed her in Charade with Cary Grant, and also starring a young and handsome Albert Finney, Two for the Road is the story of a marriage told through the travels the couple makes together through Europe over the years.
Mr. Finney and Ms. Hepburn play Mark and Joanna Wallace, who meet while hitchhiking around Europe. The movie unfolds out of order, with pieces of their relationship brilliantly patched together in non-linear form, going back and forth on the timeline of their lives together, from that hitchhiking trip all the way through Mark’s rising success as an architect and through the birth of their first child. The non-linear device was very unconventional for its time and was used to glorious effect.
Also unconventional for the time was the film’s raw honesty about one couple’s journey through a relationship. It’s the kind of movie that could make couples nervous because of its brutally honest portrayal of love, romance, resentment, infidelity, estrangement and reconciliation. Some people, consequently, find the movie hard to see, while others have privately thanked Mr. Donen for creating such an honest portrayal of love and marriage (especially for 1967). I can only imagine that Two for the Road never got the publicity it deserved because it made studio executives (and probably critics) uncomfortable.
Henry Mancini composed the score. Like Ms. Hepburn’s performance, Mr. Mancini’s brilliant work on this film remains largely unsung and eclipsed by other, more widely known works like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther.
My father was a huge romantic, and this was one of his favorite movies. He bought a Betamax copy and I became smitten with the movie myself at age 12. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since I find Two for the Road one of the most honest romantic movies I’ve ever seen.
Watch the trailer:
WARDROBE NOTE: Two for the Road was the first movie in a long time where Ms. Hepburn’s wardrobe would not be a couture collaboration with iconic fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy. Stanley Donen felt – and rightly so – that a wife in this marriage would be in ready-to-wear clothing. As one can see even in the trailer, the director’s choice worked beautifully.
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One of my favorite Audrey Hepburn films.
ALTHOUGH AUDREY WAS GOOD IN 1967’S “WAIT UNTIL DARK,” SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN OSCAR NOMINATED FOR “TWO FOR THE ROAD” INSTEAD. ALSO, SHE SHOULD HAVE WON THE OSCAR FOR THIS AND FOR “THE NUN’S STORY.”