Only Two Can Play

John Lewis is a librarian in a small town in the Welsh valleys, bored with his job and his marriage and unable to say so to anyone. Liz, the wife of a local councillor, notices him and comes after him. The town has its eye on them; a door opens, a telephone rings, a neighbour walks past, and the two of them can never manage to be alone. The more they try, the funnier the situation gets. Sidney Gilliat directed it from Kingsley Amis's novel. Peter Sellers is not playing a broad type here but a man wedged into his own life, and he gets the comedy out of missed opportunities. The tension between small-town morality and desire runs all the way through without ever becoming an open scandal. Mai Zetterling and Virginia Maskell set up the two sides, and Richard Attenborough has a small part.