The film was based on the 1939 novel Christ in Concrete by Pietro Di Donato.

The film depicts how Geremio and his family endure the struggles of living in Brooklyn during the Great Depression.

At the time this movie was made, Dmytryk had been blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten.

He called it "a film drama of considerable graphicness but of oddly limited power."

While praising the movie for its "careful and earnest attempt to capture the hard yet wistful quality of Mr. di Donato's tale", Crowther said that "the spirit and compulsion of this deeply distressing tale of poverty and frustration are absent from the film.