This is a wonderful opportunity to see the lovely - and ultimately tragic - Virginia Maskell who illuminates every scene in which she appears. We can only thank God that the vastly overrated ego-tripping Peter Sellers was foiled by director Syndey Gilliat in his efforts to have her replaced. Sellers himself walks through the part of a horny and vaguely discontented librarian who is equally frustrated in his attempts at sex with a more than willing Mai Zetterling - as I haven't read the book it's unclear whether screenwriter Bryan Forbes stole the idea of the lower class male having an affair with the foreign-born wife of a wealthy businessman himself (from John Braine's Room At The Top, filmed four years earlier) or whether the culprit was Kingles Amis in his original novel. Whatever it doesn't really come off as there is a notable lack of sexual chemistry between Sellers and Zetterling. Forbes, notorious for featuring his wife, Nanette Newman, in his movies, clearly stretches that to close friends and tailored a cameo for his great friend Richard 'Bunter' Attenborough. Though badly dated it's still worth seeing for Virginia Maskell.
Review of Only Two Can Play
