The rights to the play were held by the Pathé-Natan company, who also had a contract with Gaby Morlay, the preferred actress of both Boyer and L'Herbier for the other leading role.

[2] Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her.

L'Herbier himself adapted Bernstein's play for the screenplay, in collaboration with Michel Duran for the dialogue, remaining mostly faithful to the original text while creating opportunities to use visual means of expression in place of verbal ones.

Cinema is given a further element of self-reflexivity in the scenes of the film-within-the-film which is shown to be shot at the Joinville Studios with Harry Stradling as the cameraman, just like Le Bonheur.

He eventually won the case, and it marked the first time that a film director in France was legally recognised as having rights of authorship in his work.