To re-create 1950s Paris, the drama was mostly filmed in Budapest, Hungary.
Based on Georges Simenon's 1948 novel, Maigret et son mort.
The original story by Georges Simenon was published in 1948, and although the setting for this version appear to have moved it slightly forward in time to the 1950s, the crimes actually echo very closely those of forty years earlier, when in two parts of France there were gangs of roaming bandits who raided remote farms, torturing and murdering the occupants to steal their valuables. Neither ended well for the ring-leaders, who duly kept their dates with Madame la Guillotine at two multiple public executions during the course of 1909. A total of seven heads tumbled into the tub.