Advertisements placed in the Motion Picture Herald during 1937 noted the film "Under The Red Robe, directed by Victor Sjostrom as having been adapted from the "unforgettable novel" written by Stanley T. Whyman and the play by Edward Rose. The Review of Reviews section of World Film News during 1937 quoted the Birmingham Mail. "The period film, we are continually being told (by people in the industry, not the public) is dead. And the period film, hardier than the prophets, continues for the delight of the romantically inclined in an unromantic age...This is a film to enjoy if you have a heart for swashbuckling."
From the letters to his wife during the summer of and autumn of 1936 we can very well follow the work of the script, the planning and the shooting of "Under The Red Robe". Bengt Forslund chronicles the film's direction by Victor Sjostrom.
The novel "Under the Red Robe", written by Stanley J. Weyman in 1894, had been filmed on two previous occaisions, once in Great Britain in 1915, directed by Wilfred Noy and again in as a ten reel silent film the United States durin 1923, directed by Alan Crosland and starring actress Alma Rubens. The work had already appeared on stage as dramatized by Edward Ross.
Scholar Bo Florin mentions that although while directing in Sweden, Victor Sjostrom spearheaded the Golden Age of Silent and brought international recognition to a Scandinavian cinema that situated its narrative in the literature and landscapes or rural Sweden, in regard to characters and plots, the dramas depicted by Sjostrom would have fit into any international context, perhaps this evolving from Sjostrom's beginnings on the Swedish stage and in the theater.
Bo Florin's seminal volume on Victor Sjostrom and Hollywood concludes chronologically before Sjostrom travelled to England to direct "Under the Red Robe", but if we were to formulate his opinion after his ghving analyzed the transition to sound and the film "Lady to Love" directed by Victor Sjostrom, "Under the Red Robe" might be both like and unlike what we are to expect from Victor Sjostrom. On the one had Florin argues with Begnt Forslunnd that the scripts handed to Sjostrom were primarily literary adaptations and accordingly, "Under the Robe" would fit into Sjostrom's aspiration, although more of a historical costume drama perhaps more suited for Swedish director John Brunius in regard to genre audience expectations. On the otherhand, Victor Sjostrom's success in both Sweden and America was based on his developing a Swedish national style in regard to mise en scene and lyrical intimacy where his last film, filmed with sound might veer from the style of the Golden Age of Swedish Silent Film.
"Under the Red Robe" was the last film directed by Victor Sjostrom, who returned to appearing on screen as an actor during 1939 in the films "Mot ny Tider" (Towards New Time, Sigurd Wallen) and "Gubben Kommer". Author Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Cinema, describing the Sweden to which Victor Sjostrom was to return. "Finally, more encouragement was given to authors to write direct for the screen and there was less dependence on fiction and stage sources. As a result these various influences, the Swedish cinema gradually underwent a change. It is not possible to isolate a moment in film history and say that everything before belongs to one period, everything after to another."
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