Alain is seen in his room reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". Visible among his other books are Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited and Other Stories" and "This Side of Paradise".
For the first two days, filming was done in color. However, director Louis Malle realized that this was a distraction from the story, so he decided to film in black-and-white.
The Minville twins, well-off OAS sympathisers, were added to the script by Malle as a criticism of right wing nouvelle vague directors and their support for the French occupation of Algeria.