Last film of Janie Marèse who was killed in a car accident shortly after filming was completed.
This is considered the first French film where the sound was recorded directly and on real locations, not post synched or in the studio.
Michel Simon fell in love with Janie Marèse during filming, while she fell in love with Georges Flamant, a relationship which director Jean Renoir and producer Pierre Braunberger encouraged, thinking it would benefit first-time actor Flamant's performance. A few days after filming was complete, Flamant took Marèse for a drive despite barely knowing how to, and got in a car crash resulting is Marèse's death. A distraught Simon fainted at her funeral and pointed a gun at Renoir, threatening to kill him.
In order to change her own "over-refined" accent into that of a low class girl, Renoir made Marese imitate Maurice Chevalier.