This film was inspired by the assassination of New York architect Stanford White in 1906, and his connection with the dancer Evelyn Nesbit. The same case was handled in the cinema by Richard Fleischer in La fille sur la balançoire (1955) , with Ray Milland and Joan Collins interpreting the pair of lovers, and by Milos Forman in Ragtime (1981) , with Elizabeth McGovern and Norman Mailer.
Like L'ivresse du pouvoir (2006), four Chabrols worked on the film: Director and co-writer Claude Chabrol, his screenplay-supervisor wife Aurore Chabrol, and his two sons: composer Matthieu Chabrol and actor Thomas Chabrol.
This was the first time Claude Chabrol wrote a screenplay with Cécile Maistre, his first assistant. They were attracted to the story of Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit, but transposed it into a contemporary setting.