Paris' Canal Saint-Martin and the Hôtel du Nord were both fully recreated at the Billancourt film studios, as it was felt filming at real locations would be too challenging. For the canal, ditches were dug and filled with water on land outside of the studio that was owned by a cemetery.
Marcel Carné initially asked his friend Jacques Prévert to write the script, but Prévert was too busy.
For the leading role, Marcel Carné's production company Sedif suggested a rising young actress with an innocent beauty. Annabella's previous pictures had sold very well in the European market and she even had an offer to make a film in Hollywood. She was paired with Jean-Pierre Aumont. They had previously played star-crossed lovers in Anatole Litvak's film Flight Into Darkness (1935) (Flight Into Darkness).
After the controversy over the army deserter in Port of Shadows (1938), Marcel Carné wanted to steer clear of anything with political implications for his next film (it was widely criticized for being too negative about the State and moral character of the French). With Hotel du Nord (1938), Carné reduced any politics to that of the romantic relationships. In 1938, Carné developed Eugène Dabit's novel Hôtel du Nord into a film treatment. Dabit's book was popular in France and had won the 1929 Populist Prize. The author was the son of the owners of the real Hôtel du Nord which, like the film, was located along the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. Dabit never saw the film, having died of scarlet fever in 1936.
It is in Hotel du Nord (1938) that Arletty says the famous line "Atmosphère ! Atmosphère ! Est-ce que j'ai une gueule d'atmosphère ?" ("Atmosphere! Atmosphere! Do I look like an atmosphere?"). It became one of the famous lines of French cinema history.