Balchin’s films

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Balchin wrote his first screenplay (an adaptation of Howard Spring’s novel Fame is the Spur) for the Boulting brothers soon after World War Two. He continued to write for the silver screen for roughly the next 20 years. Balchin’s successes as a screenwriter include Mandy, The Man Who Never Was (for which he received a BAFTA) and adaptations of his own novels Mine Own Executioner and A Sort of Traitors (which was retitled Suspect for cinema release).

Balchin’s work has also been brought to the screen by others. Powell and Pressburger made a superb, atmospheric version of The Small Back Room in the late 1940s and, much more recently, Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes debuted behind the camera with an update of A Way Through the Wood that he retitled Separate Lies.

Film screenplays
Fame is the Spur (GFD/Two Cities/Charter; UK) — 1947
Mine Own Executioner (London Films; UK) — 1947
Mandy (Ealing Films; UK) — 1952
Malta Story (GFD/British Film Makers; UK) — 1953
Josephine and Men (adaptation of the Balchin short story ‘Among Friends’) (Charter; UK) — 1955
Twenty-Three Paces to Baker Street (Twentieth Century Fox; US) — 1956
The Man Who Never Was (Sumar Films; UK) — 1956
Sea Wife (uncredited) (Sumar Films; UK) — 1957
The Barbarian & the Geisha (uncredited) (Twentieth Century Fox; US) — 1958
The Blue Angel (Twentieth Century Fox; US) — 1959
Suspect (British Lion; UK) — 1960
Circle of Deception (Twentieth Century Fox; US) — 1961
The Singer not the Song (Rank; UK) — 1961
Barabbas (Columbia; Italy/US) – 1962
Cleopatra (Twentieth Century Fox; US) — 1963

Other films developed from a Balchin source
The Small Back Room (London Films; UK) — 1949
Separate Lies (Fox Searchlight/Celador Films/DNA Films; UK) — 2005