The screenplay was by Robert Ardrey, adapted by George Froeschel from the 1823 novel Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott.

Unlike the earlier films, it was scored by Bronislau Kaper rather than Miklós Rózsa, who was busy on other projects at the time.

In 1465, honorable but penniless Scottish knight Quentin Durward agrees to go to France to find out if the beautiful young heiress, Isabelle, Countess of Marcroy, would be a suitable wife for his aged uncle.

Quentin pursues and manages to foil an attempted robbery by brigands under the command of Count William de La Marck, though Isabelle continues on her way unaware of her protector's identity.

Upon the unexpected arrival of Count Phillip de Creville, a Burgundian ambassador seeking Isabelle, Louis orders Quentin to guard her and to keep her presence secret.

Louis concocts a plan to have De la Marck kidnap and forcibly marry Isabelle to keep her strategically important lands out of Burgundian hands.

In 1951, MGM filmed an adaptation of Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott in Britain, starring Robert Taylor and produced by Pandro S. Berman.

Producer Berman thought that audiences would accept romance if it was presented "at face value, on a pure basis, as a clean unsmutty kind of thing and without sexy overtones.

I haven't got any rules to lay down for successful pictures, but one fact is sure today - people want something besides words, beside conversation pieces from the screen.

He wrote: "It lacks for excitement when...the intrigues of France's Louis XI and the Duke of Burgundy are placed upon the screen in such lengthy and ponderous complexity that they exhaust and befuddle the mind...The times when this heavily stuffed contrivance does have a tendency to move are when Mr. Taylor is working to get himself out of jams...And the big terminal fight...swinging on bell-ropes...is pretty good".