Two Living, One Dead

Two Living, One Dead
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Anthony Asquith
Produced by	Teddy Baird Karl Moseby
Written by	Anthony Asquith Lindsay Galloway Sigurd Christiansen (novel)
Starring	Patrick McGoohan Virginia McKenna Bill Travers Alf Kjellin
Music by	Jack Gill Bengt Hallberg
Cinematography	Gunnar Fischer
Edited by	Oscar Rosander
Release date	3 April 1961
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United Kingdom Sweden
Language	English

Two Living, One Dead is a 1961 British-Swedish existentialist thriller film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Patrick McGoohan, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers.

The film is a remake of the 1937 Norwegian film To levende og en død, which in turn was adapted from the novel of the same name by author Sigurd Christiansen. The Scandinavian small-town setting of the earlier film was kept but the action was moved to Sweden.

Erik Berger (McGoohan) is a reticent, socially withdrawn man who has been working for 20 years in the same Post Office in a Swedish town, not socialising with colleagues and interested only in his wife Helen (McKenna) and son. In contrast his workmate Andersson (Travers) is loud and gregarious, seeing himself as the office joker although his treatment of more junior staff sometimes verges on the malicious.

A violent hold-up – heard, but not shown on screen – takes place, during which the office supervisor is shot dead and Andersson suffers a head injury which knocks him out and leaves him concussed. Berger meanwhile, entering the office after hearing the commotion and thinking of his family, resists the urge to risk his life by trying to fight back against the raiders, and emerges uninjured from the incident. In the aftermath, he is treated with barely disguised contempt by the police, his employers and the local community in general, who make it clear that they consider his failure to fight back a mark of spineless cowardice. He does not receive the promotion to office supervisor which he was previously in line for on the retirement of his boss; instead the job is given to Andersson, who is now being cast in a heroic light. As he becomes increasingly depressed by his ostracism, his relationship with Helen suffers and he feels unable to confide in her. He comes to see himself as the coward everybody is accusing him of being, and even Helen begins to wonder whether he could have acted differently.