After seeing the film, Jean-Luc Godard said that Bresson was "to French cinema what Mozart is to German music and Dostoevsky is to Russian literature".
Bresson insisted on complete authenticity. Original author Andre Devigny served as adviser on the film, which was actually shot in the same Montluc prison where he was incarcerated. Devigny also loaned Bresson the ropes and hooks he had used in his escape.
Francois Leterrier was a philosophy student at the Sorbonne when he was chosen to play the lead.
Robert Bresson himself had been a prisoner of war during WWII.
The first film of Bresson's where he used a completely non-professional cast.
This forms the first of a loose trilogy by Robert Bresson of prison pictures, with the other films being "Pickpocket" and "The Trial of Joan of Arc".