Made in English as an Italian-French-German-Swiss-Spanish-US co-production, with Bob Hoskins, Anthony Hopkins and Susan Sarandon in the leading roles, it first aired on Rai Uno on 15 April 1985 in a 130-minute version.

[1] The film reunited Hoskins and Hopkins after they had played Othello and Iago for the BBC Television Shakespeare series a few years earlier.

Its Italian shoot overlapped with the filming (in Yugoslavia) of Mussolini: The Untold Story starring George C. Scott: when asked about the rival series by a journalist, Scott called Hopkins "the best English-speaking actor today".

[2] John J. O'Connor, reviewing for The New York Times, wrote that the script "keeps reducing historical issues to the dimensions of a kitchen drama.

He described Hoskins as "all done up in elaborate makeup with no place to go except to look terribly unhappy but determined to stick it out to the end", but praised the other leading performances and the production values.