Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1967

The Contenders:

Bonnie and Clyde
Divorce, American Style
La Guerre est Finie
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (winner)
Two for the Road

Marriage Gone Bad

Film: Two for the Road
Format: Turner Classic Movies on big ol’ television.

I think it might be impossible to dislike Audrey Hepburn. When I’ve got an Audrey Hepburn movie on the docket, I’m always at least going to be mildly interested in it. In Two for the Road, she’s paired up with Albert Finney, which makes for an interesting pairing. Two for the Road pairs these two as a married couple who appear to be on the verge of a divorce. What we’re going to get, then, is both a look at the state of their marriage as it stands as well as the story of how they met, courted, and why their marriage began to splinter.

The other thing that we’re going to get is a few solid and well-established tropes. It probably won’t be a surprise to you that Two for the Road features a couple that, while they start poor, has become fabulously wealthy. Much of the attraction of putting Audrey Hepburn in a film, after all, was having her serve as a fashion plate, and that she does with her typical style and aplomb. So, the marital problems we’re going to be witnessing are happening within the context of people who have enough money to ship their car to Europe. The second significant trope here is the profession of Albert Finney’s character Mark. If you had to start making guesses, it wouldn’t be too long before you guessed his profession as architect, the default occupation in the movies for a guy who is creative and has an artistic soul but is also sensible and capable of generating the sort of wealth that puts Audrey Hepburn in designer clothing.