The making of this film was especially difficult. Screenwriter Gavin Lambert was, in later years, inclined to blame this chiefly on the abrasive and dictatorial personality of producer Paul Graetz, whom he and director Nicholas Ray both disliked intensely. The original plan was to cast Richard Burton as Brand and Montgomery Clift as Leith, but, when Clift dropped out of the film, Burton was promoted to the heroic role and Graetz insisted on Curt Jurgens being cast as the cowardly Brand, as he was a popular European star who was just starting to make American films, and it was assumed that this casting would be good for box-office. The fact that a German actor would be unlikely to be convincing as a British officer was ignored by Graetz. Ray and Lambert made the character South African to explain Jurgens' accent. The screenplay was constantly changed throughout filming, causing the actors much distress and bafflement, and Ray found the whole experience a disheartening one, although the film came to be recognized as one of his best. It was a box-office failure which was heavily cut to a running time of 82 minutes in the US.
Christopher Lee later said that this was the only movie he made that he wanted to leave after 24 hours. He also didn't know what part he would be playing until the last minute and was told by director Nicholas Ray, "not to bring all this British Army nonsense into it". Lee, who had served with British Special Forces during World War II, said he was left speechless at Ray's remark.
Nicholas Ray was playing and lost nearly all his money on the local casino during the production of the film, and he also met a eighteen years old French drug addict who provoked the collapse of the director in the drug and booze abuse.
According to Mylène Demongeot, who met Nicholas Ray on the set of this movie, he drank a full glass of vodka every morning as easily as water.
In his private diaries, Richard Burton records that he and Nigel Green got into a fistfight during filming. He implies that the reasons were boredom, alcohol and irritation at being "stuck together" on-set for so long, rather than serious animosity.