Vivien Leigh's costumes were made in Paris by Barbara Karinska to Cecil Beaton's designs. She was in such pain wearing them that she even went to her doctor fearing she had broken her ribs. It was subsequently discovered that the dresser had been putting the corsets on upside down.
Michael Redgrave was cast, but pulled out when he was offered Le deuil sied à Électre (1947) in Hollywood.
This was one of three British films to be picketed at U.S. theaters by the anti-British group The Sons of Liberty. The other films were Un mari idéal (1947) and Mon propre bourreau (1947). The group was founded by Professor John Amertenko, who was not allowed to stay in Great Britain, and generally tried to stop all things British (including cloth and Scotch whisky) from being sold in the U.S. The focus on films might have been spurred by Britain's quota on U.S. films; at the time no more than 35% of films shown in Britain could come from the U.S. The group's activities caused producer Sir Alexander Korda to stop sending films to the U.S. until the picketing stopped.
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of this movie. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second or third-generation (or more) copies of this movie.
Opening credits: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house.