 The film is set in a French garrison town in the period just before the First World War, the end of the Belle Époque.Describing the origins of the film, Clair said, "Having passed a part of my childhood near Versailles, I could not forget the cavalry officers, their galloping in the forest of Viroflay, the rumors of their adventures, a duel which the newspapers talked about and in which two of those officers died..." Elsewhere he commented, "For me it is a very sentimental film, even more sentimental because it is situated in the period of my childhood.I put into it things that I saw."