The film was almost impossible to find for nearly sixty years due to Arthur Miller blocking the film from being screened or released in any way. This was, according to different accounts, either so that the film didn't steal the spotlight from an English-language adaptation of his play he was working on, and which eventually came out as La Chasse aux sorcières (1996), or as an act of revenge on star Yves Montand, who had an affair with his wife Marilyn Monroe. Actress Mylène Demongeot begged Miller on several occasions to allow the film to be shown again, both before and after the newer adaptation came out and bombed at the box office, but in vain. French company Pathé finally acquired the rights and restored the film in 2016 and released it on Blu-ray and DVD on March 29th 2017, twelve years after Miller's death.
The first film version of the play. It was made in East Berlin, and in the French language, because American studios were terrified of filming a play by a recently blacklisted author which implicitly criticized the Joseph McCarthy "witch hunts" for Communists.
The original Broadway production (premiere) of "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller opened at the Martin Beck Theater on January 22, 1953, ran for 197 performances and won the 1953 Tony Award for the Best Play.
Pascale Petit made her acting debut in the film. She was discovered working at a hairdressing salon by director Raymond Rouleau's wife, actress Françoise Lugagne. She had no acting experience whatsoever and botched her audition, but Lugagne was convinced this was the girl her husband was looking for and thus trained her for a few weeks, after which she was given a second, successful, audition.
One of four major Franco-East German co-productions made during the late 1950s with Les aventures de Till L'Espiègle (1956), Les misérables (1958) and Les arrivistes (1960). The Democratic Republic's government authorized the DEFA studio to collaborate with companies outside the Eastern Bloc in order to gain access to Western audiences, thus bypassing the limitations imposed by West Germany's Hallstein Doctrine. Eventually, they intended their films to reach also the public in the Federal Republic. The French, on their part, were interested in reducing costs by filming in East Germany.