Only Two Can Play (1962)
Peter Sellers as a Walter Mitty-style fantasist and failed lecher is as prone to disaster and ridicule as Kenneth Griffith's henpecked hubbie in Only Two Can Play.
The happy serendipity of these two born character actors and the script by the talented Frank Launder-Sidney Gilliat team ensures this film, directed by Bryan Forbes, remains the best comedy ever set in Wales.
Kingsley Amis, author of the film's original source novel That Uncertain Feeling, was not impressed by Forbes' direction, claiming that certain scenes coarsened his work. Few would have such strong reservations, as the chapter of accidents befalling Sellers' attempts at seduction as he pursues an influential councillor's exotic wife (Mai Zetterling) punctuate, often hilariously, a film never short of entertainment.
Sellers, a rival of Griffith (his neighbour) for a top library job, is distracted from a conventional career pursuit by his lust and activities as the local paper drama critic.
The film's funniest set piece revolves around Sellers' nocturnal date with Zetterling, preventing his presence at a play when a set dramatically catches fire. His obliviousness to the incident has obvious repercussions over next day's breakfast table when Sellers chirrups on about the dull play as his wife (Virginia Maskell) scans headline news of the blaze.
There are innumerable cameos and vignettes to savour. John Le Mesurier is as nonplussed as we might expect when he encounters Sellers in improbable guise in the house of Zetterling's husband. Meredith Edwards is irresistible as a hopelessly parochial religious bookworm. Richard Attenborough is suitably snobbish as a would-be playwright, an inevitable target for Sellers' withering disdain, and Mai Zetterling (earlier a star of Swedish films) is convincing as a seductress with no scruples about duping her hubbie maritally and financially.
It's the teaming of Sellers and Griffith, those regular companions of British comedy (I'm All Right, Jack and Heavens Above), which most delights.
Sellers' John Lewis, smug and patronising, has scarcely-veiled contempt for his neighbour's intellectual capacities, yet his sometimes deceptively self-confident assertions are repeatedly undermined by plot twists. (The pair, at their best, remind us of Laurel and Hardy.)
There's a fine moment when Griffith leaves home for work but not before saluting, with his one free hand, his wife behind the net curtain. His other hand remains anchored at his side throughout, a symbol of his repression.
The film was the fourth highest British film grosser of its year and British Lion's biggest success in 1962. It was also the first Welsh-set film ever to attract an X-cert for its nude mirror shot of Mai Zetterling's rear, apparently, but actually the posterior of a stunt double.
