Production
Behold a Pale Horse was co-produced by Columbia Pictures, along with Zinnemann (Highland Productions) and Peck (Brentwood Productions). With a budget of $3.9 million, the production hit a snag when the Franco government refused permission to film in Spain. The production resorted to filming exterior shots across the border in France: Biarritz on la Côte Basque, and locations in Béarn such as Pau, Oloron, Gotein-Libarrenx, La Brèche de Roland, and the basilica at Lourdes, as well as Studio St. Maurice in Vincennes.
Originally, Anthony Quinn had requested the role of Artiquez, but Zinnemann felt it would be type-casting him, and gave him the opposing role of the villain Viñolas. As well, several Spanish refugees were used to play the parts of Franco's Guardia Civil officers. The American political activist Allard K. Lowenstein played a part in making contact between the filmmakers and anti-Franco Spanish exiles in France. Zinnemann felt it would be good for Peck to be able to meet actual political refugees living in France.
Filming began on June 13, 1963, and continued for a little over 100 days, running nearly a month over schedule. After Columbia previewed the film for US audiences, they decided that an intro was needed to provide background relating to the Spanish Civil War, so clips from the documentary about the war To Die in Madrid were interspersed with dialogue explaining the conflict.
Read more about this topic: Behold A Pale Horse (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)