The Go-Between (1971 film) envisaged Alec Guinness and Margaret Leighton in the leads and employed Nancy Mitford to write a script. L.P. Hartley later claimed Korda had no real intention to make a film of the book - he kept the rights hoping to re-sell them at a profit. Hartley says "I was so annoyed when I heard of this that I put a curse on him and he died, almost the next morning." Joseph Losey was interested in filming the novel. He tried to get financing for a version in 1963 after "The Servant" and says Pinter wrote "two thirds of a script".
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (novel) The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (novel) The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, first published in English in 1938, is a crime thriller by Georges Simenon about a man's rapid descent into criminality and madness following sudden financial ruination. A film adaptation was released in 1952. Kees Popinga, a quiet, respectable Dutch clerk from Groningen becomes increasingly unhinged after discovering that his cynical employer has looted and ruined his firm and confides in him that he will fake a suicide in order to escape punishment. Popinga strangles his boss's mistress and hurriedly leaves town, eventually making