[1][2] While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process.

[4] A 25% talking version, incorporating "synchronised sound effects, music and dialogue sequences", was made without Murnau's cooperation.

Film historian and collector William K. Everson stated that the only surviving print was lost by actress Mary Duncan, who had borrowed it from Fox Studios.

[7] The source novella by Herman Bang was first adapted into film in 1911[8] by Robert Dinesen and Alfred Lind, and finally in 1985 by Anders Refn.

The screenplay for the 1928 film was novelized by Guy Fowler and published that year by Grosset & Dunlap as a hardcover photoplay (movie tie-in) edition.