[2][3][4] The beautiful and fiery gypsy Belle (Melina Mercouri) marries Regency playboy Sir Paul Deverill (Keith Michell) for his money.

Losey was going to make a film with Bogarde, Bird of Paradise based on The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.

[8] Mercouri later wrote she was "scraping the bottom of the barrel when" offered the job and during filming "knew I was giving a poor performance, but" Losey "never stopped trying...

[11] Muriel Pavlow, who was under contract to Rank, was offered a role but turned it down "foolishly because, although it was a rubbishy film, it was directed by Joseph Losey.

",[12] Losey said "I had decided that we should make an extravagant melodrama and at the same time try and present something of the real feeling of the Regency period where there were no toilets, and people bathed once a week if they were lucky, in a tub, and the gentlemen, when they got drunk, pissed in the fireplace.

Losey did not enjoy filming, calling produced Maurice Cowan a "monster" although he felt with the cinematographer, Mercouri, the designer and editor " we were really able to make something."

He fell out with John Davis and Rank insisted on a score by Hans May which the director said "changed the mood and the pace to such a degree, that for the first and only time in my life I left the picture before it was finished.

"[15] Variety magazine wrote: Harking, back to the British film days of such successful pix as “The Wicked Lady" and “The Man in Grey,” there Is genuine reason to believe that “Gypsy” may make an equal financial sweep in Britain.

"[21][22] The film marks the first film in which Losey approaches the class themes that would become central to his subsequent work, particularly in The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971)[23] An American by birth and upbringing (he was born to a wealthy and politically conservative family in La Crosse, Wisconsin), Losey adopted leftist and class-oriented views during the 1930s.