Wissenswertes

The first Hungarian movie filmed in color. Because of the lack of money filmmakers used Gevacolor reels, which were found by the police at smugglers on the Romanian border. This caused that all color prints of this movie paled down to black and white in a few years, and the sound also heavily damaged.

Some of the mansions in the movie were actually residences of Communist party officials.

Mari Szemes's debut.

The original story by Mihály Fazekas was heavily altered for political reasons (the movie was filmed in 1949, the year of the Communist takeover of Hungary). The original story takes place in the late Middle Ages but the film is set in the 1820s, shortly before the 1848 anti-Habsburg revolution. Matyi is a lazy, good-for-nothing kid in the original story, while in the film he is a smart, intelligent young man, determined to study sciences and ascend from his poor peasant social status (which was lauded as an ideal path for young people of worker or peasant upbringing in the Communist era). Matyi fighting back against the tyrannical upper classes sets an example and gains many followers among the peasants, another story element with heavy Marxist-Leninist undertones, not found in the original story.