This was a dream project for Charlton Heston, and he had a heavy input into all aspects of the production. His strong feeling was that the film should be essentially an intimate drama, but he found that Universal expected a sort of historical epic, such as he had made many times before. He could not shake them from this goal, and the studio re-edited the film so that the action scenes were more prolonged, whilst several more intimate scenes were cut. He had wanted Stanley Baker for the Guy Stockwell role. The film was a box-office flop, and the experience was one which rankled Heston for the remainder of his life.

The action supposedly takes place in Normandy, in land belonging to the Duke of Ghent. However, Normandy was entirely under the rule of its own Duke; Ghent was a separate territory under the Count of Flanders.

Referenced in Biography: Charlton Heston: For All Seasons (1995)