Director Víctor Erice considers this to be an unfinished project. The original script consisted of more than 400 pages and was scheduled to be shot in 81 days. 48 days into shooting, when production was to be moved to the south of Spain, producer Elías Querejeta unexpectedly suspended the project, allegedly because of financing objections by Televisión Española, the backing television network. However, Querejeta revealed years later that he made the decision because he thought the film was complete with what they'd shot so far.
Voted eighth best Spanish film by professionals and critics in 1996 Spanish cinema centenary.
This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #927.
His visual style has been compared to Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Víctor Erice himself has expressed his admiration for the aesthetic of F.W. Murnau and Josef von Sternberg. Erice's own films seem painterly, and have been compared to the use of light by artists like Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez. His El Sur - Der Süden (1983) cinematographer José Luis Alcaine adds Michelangelo da Caravaggio and Rembrandt van Rijn to that list.
But to this day, the director regrets what was lost. In a 2003 interview with British film historian Geoff Andrew, Víctor Erice noted the irony: "many critics applauded the fact that the south...was never actually seen. My taste's a little more commonplace: I wanted to show it....It was a metaphor for the divisions that became apparent in the Civil War and also for the divisions in an individual who can't reconcile two aspects of his own being."