Making this movie was, first of all, an incredibly courageous act in its own time. As the inhabitant of another so-called Socialist country, I had never seen a film (or read an book at that matter) before, made by an artist living in such a country who managed to get away with depicting “an enemy of the Socialist system” as an utterly likable and attractive figure. The film was shot in b/w, and the Eisensteinian yet thoroughly new kind of use of shadows, wide-angle shots, distorted close-ups, etc was also something entirely new at the time. I saw the movie at least ten times back then. I managed to see it again recently, and still found it very much watchable, despite the odd bits of theatricality and slowness that are a bit dated today.