Renoir confessed that at the time when he wrote the screenplay, he had not read Zola's novel in over 25 years: "While I was shooting, I kept modifying the scenario, bringing it closer to Zola .. the dialogue which I gave Simone Simon is almost entirely copied from Zola's text.
Filming commenced on August 12, 1938, with exteriors on the Gare Saint-Lazare and at Le Havre [REF].