Kenneth More says in his autobiography, "More or Less", that he was against having Vivien Leigh as his co star in the film, regarding her as altogether too glamorous. He felt that the play's concentration on the squalor of the surroundings in which the Leigh character finds herself had been greatly diminished for the film, which had color, CinemaScope and locations in Switzerland and made no reference to the deprivations of the war or the post-war austerity era in Britain. Leigh was aware of his opposition, which he expressed openly at a rehearsal, and he says that did not help the chemistry between the two of them. (More would have preferred Peggy Ashcroft with whom he had appeared in the original play - she was less glamorous and older). The 2011 remake resolutely de-glamorizes everything.
According to Alexander Walker in 'Sex in the Movies', Marlene Dietrich turned down the film "on the grounds that she could never be convincing as a woman who tries to gas herself because she cannot keep her lover or find other men."
The audience is never precisely told what has led Mr. Miller to abandon the life of a doctor (and adopt the considerably more precarious life of a self-employed bookmaker), or what led him to spend a year in prison. The strong implication is that he was an abortionist, something illegal in Britain at the time, and also proscribed as a topic for free discussion by British film censors.
Probably unreleased in France; The date (6-1-1956) provided by Encyclo-Ciné must be the press screening date.
Re-made in 2011 with Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston.
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