Only Two Can Play

Only Two Can Play
US cinema poster
Directed by	Sidney Gilliat
Screenplay by	Bryan Forbes
Based on	That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis
Produced by	Leslie Gilliat
Starring	Peter Sellers Mai Zetterling Virginia Maskell Richard Attenborough
Cinematography	John Wilcox
Edited by	Thelma Connell
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Distributed by	British Lion Films (UK) Kingsley-International Pictures (US)
Release date	11 January 1962
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Only Two Can Play is a 1962 British comedy film starring Peter Sellers, based on the 1955 novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis. Sidney Gilliat directed the film from a screenplay by Bryan Forbes.

The film is set in the fictional South Wales town of Aberdarcy, and largely filmed in and around Swansea, Amis's stated model for Aberdarcy.

Plot

John Lewis (Sellers) is a poorly paid and professionally frustrated librarian and occasional drama critic, whose affections fluctuate between glamorous Liz (Mai Zetterling), and his long-suffering wife Jean (Virginia Maskell).

When a better paid job becomes vacant, Lewis is reluctant to apply, but is persuaded to do so by Jean. Then, he meets the obviously attractive Elizabeth Gruffydd-Williams (Liz), a designer with the local amdram company and wife of a local councillor.

Liz offers to intercede with her husband to help in getting Lewis the job, and makes it clear that she is attracted to him. Lewis is easily seduced into an affair, although it remains unconsummated.

Having been persuaded by Liz to leave the theatre's new production early one evening for an assignation, Lewis submits a bogus review to the local newspaper, but learns the next morning that the theatre burned down shortly after the play commenced. Jean thus learns of the affair and retaliates by encouraging her old flame Probert (Richard Attenborough), a self-important literary character and dramatist (who wrote the ill-fated play). Lewis also loses the friendship of his colleague and best friend, Ieuan Jenkins (Kenneth Griffith), who had a role in the play.

When Lewis is offered the better paid job, he realises that Liz will now use and control him if he lets her. Finally realising the price he has paid, he breaks off the affair and takes a job as a mobile librarian, in the hope that this will keep him away from predatory women. Jean is not so sure that he can resist them, and tags along to keep an eye on him.

Cast

• Peter Sellers as John Lewis
• Mai Zetterling as Liz
• Virginia Maskell as Jean
• Kenneth Griffith as Jenkins
• Raymond Huntley as Vernon
• David Davies as Benyon
• Maudie Edwards as Mrs. Davies
• Meredith Edwards as Clergyman
• John Le Mesurier as Salter
• Frederick Piper as Mr. Davies
• Graham Stark as Mr. Hyman
• Eynon Evans as Town Hall Clerk
• John Arnatt as Bill
• Sheila Manahan as Mrs. Jenkins
• Richard Attenborough as Probert
• Howell Evans as Library Policeman (uncredited)
• Tenniel Evans as Kennedy (uncredited)
• Laurence Luxton as American GI and Driver (uncredited)
• Desmond Llewelyn as a Vicar
• George Woodbridge as a Farmer

Reception

The Times reported the film was the third most successful film at the British box office in 1962. Films and Filming said it was the fourth most popular for Britain for the year ended 31 October 1962 after The Guns of Navarone, Dr. No and The Young Ones.

It was nominated for Best Film in the 1963 BAFTA awards.

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "ANYBODY who could do to organized labor what Peter Sellers did with his thumping performance of a union leader in the British comedy, "I'm All Right, Jack," is clearly the fellow to do the same thing to sex. And we are pleased to be able to proclaim he does it in his latest side-splitter, Only Two Can Play. With a script by Bryan Forbes that pops perpetually with some of the brightest British quips of modern times, with Sidney Gilliat directing and with a spanking new Mai Zetterling deftly applying the itching-powders as a grandly seductive Eve, Mr. Sellers performs an old Adam that puts all recent seventh-year scratchers in the shade."

External links

• Only Two Can Play at IMDb
• Only Two Can Play at the TCM Movie Database