Jessica's blue scooter is a Piaggio Vespa 150 VBA made 1958-60.
Location scenes filmed in Forza d'Agro, Sicily. The stunningly beautiful Sicilian locations were captured in Panavision and Technicolor by award-winning cinematographer Piero Portalupi, whose previous forays into Hollywood cinema had been David O. Selznick's remake of A Farewell to Arms (1957) and the Michael Curtiz-directed Francis of Assisi (1961), both shot in Italy.
The story is based on the novel by Flora Sandstrom, The Midwife of Pont Clery (New York, 1957). The novel is set in a Norman (French, not Italian) town in the early 20th century, rather than the film's contemporary setting.
Chevalier isn't the only notable Frenchman in the cast; he's joined by popular character actor (and occasional writer-director-composer) Noel-Noel and Marcel Dalio, whose 50-year career included important roles in Jean Renoir's La grande illusion (1937) and La règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939) as well as Hollywood appearances in Casablanca (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). In addition to the aforementioned French, Croatians, Americans, and Italians (how did they get in?!), the cast also included an Algerian (Kerima) - all of them, in the best tradition of the big international co-productions of the 1960s, working hard to convince the audience they were native Sicilians.
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