The American Civil War film is a sparse but faithful retelling of the story, incorporating narration from the text to move the plot forward.

Audie Murphy, a hero of World War II who later went into acting, played the lead role of Henry Fleming.

Henry and Tom fetch water at a creek and overhear an unnamed General plotting to sacrifice the 304th in a suicide attack.

Director John Huston used unusual compositions and camera angles drawn from film noir to create an alienating battlefield environment.

He became frustrated when the studio cut the film's length to 70 minutes and added narration taken from the original novel following supposedly poor audience test screenings.

[3] Much of the history of the making of this film, considered by some a mutilated masterpiece, is found in Lillian Ross' critically acclaimed book Picture.

[3] John Huston had high hopes for this movie, and even considered the original two-hour cut of the film as the best he had ever made as a director.

After a power struggle at the top of MGM management, the film was cut from a two-hour epic to the 69-minute version released to theaters in response to its alleged universally disastrous previews.

However, after this he instructed his agent Paul Kohner to include in all his future contracts a stipulation that he receive a 16 mm print of the first cut of any film he made.

This made it one of the studio's least successful films of the year although it did not lose as much money as Calling Bulldog Drummond, Mr Imperium or Inside Straight.