This is one of only a meagre handful of Nigel Balchin novels that were adapted for the screen with this and The Small Back Room being arguably the best known - in fact I know of only two more, Suspect (based on A Sort Of Traitors) and the recent adaptation of A Way Through The Wood. This is a woeful state of affairs for Balchin was a superb novelist with a gift for story-telling that made him part of a natural triumvirate - Nevil Shute and Norman Colline being the other two - of writers who also had day jobs - Shute worked in Aviation, Collins in Publishing and Balchin was a scientist. This is an excellent adaption, by Balchin himself, and is marred only slightly by - presumably to get a release in the US - changing the principal character from English to Canadian to accommodate Burgess Meredith; more noticeable is the inept performance of the wooden Keiron Moore but Dulcie Gray acquits herself well as Meredith's wife as does Christine Norden - in only her second film - as his mistress-in-waiting and Barbara White as the tragic wife who winds up with a tag on her toe. As others have remarked here, an excellent example of a lay practitioner at work.
Review of Mine Own Executioner
