He reveals to her that he had ignored warnings from friends to flee Nazi Germany before it was too late, making the fatal mistake of counting on his fame and popularity to protect his family.

Screenwriter Michael Blankfort was initially supposed to have directed the film, but was denied a passport because of his failure to exonerate himself of alleged membership in the Communist Party.

The producers initially sought to hire German actress Ursula Thiess for the role of Ya'el, but the Israeli consul in Los Angeles protested that doing so would "create a very unwelcome and unnecessary controversy.

"[6] Filming took place in Israel in late 1952 in Haifa, the kibbutz Hanita on the border with Lebanon and other locations in the Upper Galilee.

One scene was shot in a ruined house in Iqrit, a Christian Arab town whose residents were relocated by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

[6] New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that "thanks to the conception and to the performance that Mr. Douglas gives, a strong and compelling sense of character and of human pathos does come through."

He said that the film "may not be entirely consistent dramatically, but it offers a fast and fascinating journey through modern Israel, in addition to an intriguing and often touching study of a man.

[5] In their book Hollywood and Israel: A History (2022), Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman note that since Iqrit has since been completely demolished, the scene shot there has "in retrospect an unexpected documentary power and symbolic significance that neither the filmmakers nor the Israeli authorities could have ever envisaged.