Being visited by 2.636.000 people, 'Fanfare' is the second most successful Dutch movie of all time, only surpassed by Paul Verhoeven's 'Turks Fruit' (A Turkish Delight) (1973). In 2007, the film was added to the aesthetic canon of Dutch cinema.
'Fanfare' was filmed in the Dutch town Giethoorn. As an honor to actor Albert Mol, a statue of him, designed by Wim Kuijl, was placed there.
The assistant director of Fanfare (1958) was the young George Sluizer, who would become a successful director himself mostly remembered for the thriller The Vanishing (1988). During the production process of Fanfare, however, Sluizer was fired by director Bert Haanstra after insulting the Italian director Federico Fellini during a dinner with the three of them, in which Sluizer had said that he was not impressed by the latter's latest film (Nights of Cabiria (1957)). Only after months of insisting, Haanstra reluctantly reinstated Sluizer as assistant director of Fanfare.