This movie was notable for its time, for its use of an electronic and avant-garde music score, which, when heard in theaters in Dolby Stereo, was aurally separating and distorting. Reportedly, forty different music tracks were used for the sound.
Two members of the rock group Genesis, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, worked on the soundtrack. The central theme, "From the Undertow", was featured on Banks' album "A Curious Feeling".
Producer Jeremy Thomas once said of this movie: "Because I had a great director, and a quality piece of literature I managed to get a wonderful cast such as John Hurt and Alan Bates. Skolimowski had a sense of shooting style then, this was the second director with whom I had worked closely, and it was fascinating watching Skolimowski work. He came from a Polish tradition, the Wajda Film School, he had a different background to other directors with whom I had been working in the cutting rooms or elsewhere, and it made the film much more creative to me. I saw it more as an artistic endeavor by him. The film went to Cannes and won the Grand Prix de Jury. We were incredibly lucky, and the film was appreciated by the jury. It was a very small festival then, nothing like the Cannes Film Festival of today, it was a small event in a cinema of eight hundred people or so."
This movie was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. It tied with Rêve de singe (1978) for the Grand Prix de Jury.