The Naked Earth is a 1958 British drama film directed by Vincent Sherman and written by Milton Holmes and Harold Buchman.

[1] The film stars Richard Todd, Juliette Gréco, John Kitzmiller, Finlay Currie, Laurence Naismith and Christopher Rhodes.

Danny falls in love with the young woman and decides to marry her to please Father Finlay Currie and to manage the tobacco plantation.

Sherman later wrote in his memoirs, "I felt that out of this story I could get a film similar to some of the French and Italian classics that I had seen in the thirties, which were down to earth, dramatic, and filled with honest humor.

Moreover, the story especially appealed to me because it followed, to some degree, the pattern of my own marriage: Hedda and I worked together, raised a family, and loved each other, despite my lapses of unfaithful behavior.

According to Todd "the film was obviously turning out well" but "an unpleasant schism was developing between" Vincent Sherman "and the producer, who was also the screenwriter, and relations between them grew progressively worse.

Sherman wrote "It was edited as though it was intended to be a fast-moving melodrama rather than a simple, realistic love story that depended for its success on its characters and their struggle to conquer the African background.