Visconti won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Director, and was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar with co-writers Nicola Badalucco and Enrico Medioli.

In Germany in early 1933, the Essenbecks are a wealthy and powerful industrialist family who have, reluctantly, begun doing business with the newly-elected Nazi government.

Aschenbach convinces Friedrich and Martin to bar their company from selling weapons to the SA, in hopes of marginalizing the rival group and currying the favor of the army, whose might Hitler will need in order to conquer territories beyond the current German borders.

She meets up with Aschenbach, who reveals that Hitler is planning to purge the SA, as he feels its work securing Nazi power in Germany is done, but its leader, Ernst Röhm, is unlikely to quietly let it take a back seat to the SS and army.

Friedrich is now in control of the steelworks, and Sophie even gets Aschenbach to arrange a decree that gives him her father-in-law's last name and royal title of Baron so they will be able to marry as equals.

He says that, stylistically, "they emphasize lavish sets and costumes, sensuous lighting, painstakingly slow camerawork, and a penchant for imagery reflecting subjective states or symbolic values.

In his memoirs, Bogarde specifically cites a long scene showing Friedrich becoming overwhelmed with guilt after murdering Joachim, which was filmed, but cut.

Composer Maurice Jarre was hired by the producers without the knowledge of Visconti, who originally wanted the film scored entirely with pre-existing classical music by Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner.

Visconti reportedly was dissatisfied with the composer's efforts, which he compared disparagingly to Jarre's work on Doctor Zhivago, but was forced to use the music due to contractual obligations.

In Visconti's preferred, primarily English-language version of the film, most of the cast members provide their own voices, but Umberto Orsini is dubbed by an uncredited actor, due to his accent.

[7][8] Hass was a perpetrator of the Ardeatine massacre, but was not charged or convicted until 1998, allegedly due to his work as an American agent against the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

Among the international cast, Helmut Berger was singled out for his performance as Martin, a vicious sexual deviant who uses his amoral appetites to achieve his own twisted ends.

It had to be so heavily edited that one executive reportedly joked it should be retitled The Darned, but, technically, it was the first X-rated film to be shown on American network television.

[16] A 2K restoration of the film by the Cineteca di Bologna and Institut Lumière was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection on 28 September 2021.