It is based on the novel Native Son by American author Richard Wright, who also stars in the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Chenal.

Actor Canada Lee, who was originally scheduled to play the film's protagonist Bigger Thomas, had difficulties with his visa while filming Cry, the Beloved Country (1951) in South Africa and had to decline the role; with the whole production in jeopardy due to the mishap, Wright decided to step in and replace Lee.

A young black man, Bigger Thomas, is hired as a chauffeur for a progressive, affluent white family living in Chicago in the early 1940s.

Their attempts to befriend Bigger are baffling to him because no white person has ever been kind to him and reflect how oblivious they are to the reactions of the black man.

A group of reporters, relegated to the furnace room of the house, notice fragments of bone and an earring in the ashes, prompting Bigger to flee in terror.

He joins his girlfriend Bessie, a nightclub singer, in an abandoned building, but when she goes to a drug store for liquor and a sweater for him, Bigger thinks she has conspired with stool pigeon Snippy to put the police onto him, and he murders her, throwing her body into an elevator shaft.

[10] The history of this movie started with the Broadway version of Richard Wright's novel Native Son, produced by Orson Welles.

[11] France and Italy were approached for location, but both countries refused to grant the requisite permits; they were recipients of US economic aid from the Marshall Plan and were afraid of repercussions if they hosted such an incendiary film.

Funding for the film came from Argentina's government, which had raised the money by taxing the box office receipts of Hollywood movies shown there.

[13] Hollywood actress Jean Wallace accepted the female lead, possibly because her career had stalled due to personal problems.

American studios refused to release the film, but independent distributor Classic Pictures picked it up after extensive editing.

[13] Film journalist Anna Shechtman wrote in The New Yorker that the "amateurism" in the portrayal of Bigger by Wright "almost works" due to the "slow and stilted" voice "as though he's speaking to people in a language they don't know—which, partly, he was.

"[9] Regarding the restored version, Chris Vogner of the Houston Chronicle stated "Even if it's not a great film, the "Native Son" is of historical and cultural significance".