Miss Universe 1952 Armi Kuusela was considered in the role of 'Siiri Forss'. Also Anneli Sauli was screen tested, but director Matti Kassila wasn't convinced.
Jarl Hemmer, the writer whose novel the film is based on, was Fenno-Swedish, so the novel was written in Swedish and was not translated, when T.J. Särkkä ask Matti Kassila to read it. So Kassila had to translate the novel himself from Swedish into Finnish, before he was able to write the screenplay.
When released in the US, the film was masked from the original aspect ratio of 1.37 to a widescreen format, a fact that was criticized in the LA TIMES review written by critic Frank Mulcahy.