 In order to achieve the feeling of horror in a scene where a  gathering of female prisoners are harassed and psychologically  tortured in the nude, director Michael Cacoyannis decided to appeal  for volunteers rather than professional actors, asking both his  associates and friends. Michael Cacoyannis interviewed women of  different nationalities for casting the people in the scene, of  English, French, American as well as Greek descent. Most of these  women had never even seen a film camera, let alone undressed before  one. Money was never an incentive for the women. Cacoyannis has  said, "I explained that their inexperience in acting was an  advantage. That their lack of artifice, the spirituality of their  spontaneous reactions, would transcend physical realism, the way  certain paintings can." At first, he was not too successful in the  "recruiting" of these volunteers, but soon found the women he  needed. One woman was a well