Director Henri George Clouzot pushed his actors and actresses so hard - Sami Frey and Jacques Perrin were about to hit him in the face - that Brigitte Bardot tried to commit suicide after the shooting. She was too much implicated, involved in the Dominique character. She also said that this movie was the only one in her career which she was really proud of.
This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #960.
Brigitte Bardot and Sami Frey had a romantic affair at the time of filming - and she was on her second marriage, with Jacques Charrier.
In the documentary Le mystère Bardot (2012), it's revealed that during the filming on an important sequence, director Henri-Georges Clouzot slapped Brigitte Bardot, but she didn't hold back and slapped him back and left the set. After he return, the scene was shot without incidents.
Véra Clouzot, the director's wife and one of the film screenwriters, suffered a fatal heart-attack during filming and died. The film was the only screenplay she wrote (she's best known as an actress in her husband films) and it was released a few months after her death.