The Balcony is a 1963 cinematic adaptation of Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

's play The Balcony

The Balcony

The Balcony is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Since Peter Zadek directed its first production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has attracted many of the greatest directors of the 20th century, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and...

, directed by Joseph Strick

Joseph Strick

Joseph Strick was an American director, producer and screenwriter.Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Strick briefly attended UCLA before enrolling in the Army during World War II. In the Army, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Forces.In 1948, he and Irving Lerner produced Muscle Beach...

. It starred Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...

, Peter Falk

Peter Falk

Peter Michael Falk was an American actor, best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo...

, Lee Grant

Lee Grant

Lee Grant is an American stage, film and television actress, and film director. She was blacklisted for 12 years from film work beginning in the mid-1950s, but worked in the theatre, and would eventually win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Felicia Carp in the...

 and Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....

. George J. Folsey

George J. Folsey

George J. Folsey, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who worked on 162 films between 1919 and his retirement in 1976....

 was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography

Academy Award for Best Cinematography

The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...

. Ben Maddow

Ben Maddow

Ben Maddow was a prolific screenwriter and documentarian from the 1930s through the 70s. Educated at Columbia University, Maddow began his career working within the American documentary movement in the 30s.In 1936 he co-founded the short-lived left-wing newsreel The World Today...

 was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award

Writers Guild of America Award

The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...

 award. The film also credits the photographer Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for "street photography" around New York City, and has been called "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."- Biography :...

 as an assistant director, and Verna Fields

Verna Fields

Verna Fields was an American film editor, film and television sound editor, educator, and entertainment industry executive. In the first phase of her career, from 1954 through to about 1970, Fields mostly worked on smaller projects that gained little recognition. She was the sound editor for...

, who subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing, as the sound editor.

Shortly after its release, the film was negatively reviewed by the New York Times critic, Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther

Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

, and was favorably reviewed in Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

, "With Jean Genet's apparent approval, Joe Strick and Ben Maddow have eliminated the play's obscene language (though it's still plenty rough) and clarified some of its obscurations. The result is a tough, vivid and dispassionate fantasy." Following the release of the DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 recording in 2000, Karl Wareham also reviewed it favorably. "'The Balcony' is recommended for those who like an enigma of a film, one that tugs at your subconscious

Subconscious

The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....

long after the titles fade. It’s a film that reaches to the very heart of why our society works in the way it does, and presents unrelenting questions and dilemmas."