Two Living, One Dead – 1961 | 92 mins | Thriller, Crime, Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Anthony Asquith went to Sweden to film Two Living, One Dead, starring Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers and Patrick McGoohan. Based on a Nobel prize winning novel by Sigurd Christiansen, it tells of a small Swedish post-office being raided by two armed men. One of the post-office’s three clerks is shot and dies. Another, Eric (Patrick McGoohan), who is married, has a child and is afraid of losing his life, hands over the cash-box to the raiders. The third clerk, Anderson (Bill Travers) is regarded as a hero because he has a bandage round his head; whereas the man who handed over the money is treated by the people of the small town as a coward: his wife Helen (Virginia McKenna) and his young son get the backwash of the public’s hostility.

It turns out that the hero is really a coward too. Sickened by the so-called ‘hero’s’ pride and boastfulness, the clerk who has been treated as an outcast, draws a gun on him and discovers that he is not prepared to risk his life either.

Excerpt© ‘Puffin Asquith’ by R.J. Minney.