When Sammy and Susan are at the Hickory Tree nightclub, Susan spots Gillian, an old acquaintance, and asks Sammy to start talking, to avoid the meeting. Sammy starts, and then Susan joins in reciting the following lines: "I never nurs'd a dear gazelle / To glad me with its soft black eye / But when it came to know me well / And love me, it was sure to die." These lines are from the poem "Lalla Rookh" (in the section entitled "The Fire Worshipers") by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852).
Despite having brought home an Oscar®-winning film, the Technicolor epic Scarpette rosse (1948), The Rank Organisation parted ways with The Archers - Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. In a 1998 poll, this film epic was voted one of the greatest British films of all time. This film marked the return of Powell and Pressburger to Alexander Korda's London Films, where they were promised complete artistic freedom.
Robert Morley, who plays "The Minister" is credited at the end as simply "A Guest." His name never appears.
Following a string of brilliant successes from the Michael Powell - Emeric Pressburger team (films which had been equally successful in the U.S.), this movie was a box-office failure. It has been suggested that its sharply downbeat view of wartime bureaucracy was not something a 1949 audience wanted to hear about. Director Powell attributed the failure to British audiences being tired of World War II pictures. Over the years, however, it has come to be recognized as one of the team's finest and most mature films.
The film takes place in March 1943.