The film features an international cast including the American actor Burt Lancaster, the Austrian Helmut Berger and the Italians Silvana Mangano and Claudia Cardinale (in a very short role as the professor's wife) and the French actress Dominique Sanda in a cameo as the professor's mother. It was shot in English language, however, an Italian dubbed version was also produced at the time, in which Lancaster's and Berger's lines are dubbed into Italian by other actors.
The film was censored in Spain for the nude and political content and because Francisco Franco's daughter and son-in-law are mentioned. However, it was re-released there, uncut, in 1983.

Visconti was inspired in creating the main character of the professor by the Italian literary critic Mario Praz. In an interview Praz recalls how the situation described in the movie (a group of young and loud tenants moving into the old palazzo where he lived, disrupting his peace) happened for real a few months after the movie was released.
The professor is a collector of conversation pieces, 18th century English paintings. Arthur Devis is mentioned.
In the film, the cult song by Iva Zanicchi Testarda Io is heard. The aria "Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!", and the Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, both by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are heard.
The film refers to Golpe Borghese, Red Brigades and terrorism acts in the History of the Italian Republic in the earliest 70s. Konrad (Helmut Berger) fought in Berlin at May 1968.
Lietta (Claudia Marsani) recites a poem that is attributed to W. H. Auden, "There's no sex life in the grave".
The film is a critique of the world of the Jet set following Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.[citation needed]

Release Date: June 24, 1977 @ DW Griffeth

Distrib: New Line Cinema