Trivia

At a press conference at the Venice Film Festival in 1963, Alain Resnais said that his film depicted "the malaise of a so-called happy society. ...A new world is taking shape, my characters are afraid of it, and they don't know how to face up to it."

This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #824.

Alain Resnais and Jean Cayrol first discussed the project of Muriel in 1959. They developed the script while Resnais was working on L'Année dernière à Marienbad as well as on two other (uncompleted) projects relating to the then contentious topic of the war in Algeria. Cayrol, though primarily a poet and novelist, was himself interested in film-making and editing, and he produced a screenplay for Muriel in which nearly all of the complex editing sequences were outlined.

François Truffaut, writing about the film in 1964, acknowledged its demanding nature but castigated critics for failing to engage with its core elements. "Muriel is an archetypically simple film. It is the story of several people who start each sentence with 'I...'." Truffaut also drew attention to the film's many allusions to Alfred Hitchcock (including the life-size cut-out of the director outside a restaurant); "his in-depth influence on many levels ... makes Muriel ... one of the most effective tributes ever rendered the 'master of suspense'".

The scenes in Hélène's apartment where most of the action takes place were filmed on a set at Studios Dumont in Épinay, but Alain Resnais asked the designer Jacques Saulnier to reconstruct exactly a real apartment which he had seen in Boulogne, even down to the color of the woodwork.