Eileen Heckart and Frank Cady played a very different married couple 18 years earlier in The Bad Seed (1956).
The cast includes two acting Oscar winners, Gene Hackman, and Eileen Heckart, and two acting Oscar nominees, Liv Ullmann, and Susan Tyrrell. Ullmann, however, has won an honorary Oscar for her body of work.
Used to being his own cinematographer on the earlier films he had made in Sweden, director Jan Troell was disappointed that when now shooting a film for a Hollywood studio he was required by union regulations to hire a separate person to man the camera.
Principal photography began in Carmel, CA. Production continued on location in Big Sur, CA, for nine weeks and ended at Burbank Studios in Burbank, CA, for interior sequences.