Sir Dirk Bogarde considered retiring from acting after making this movie, which he found to be a draining experience.
According to an interview given by Charlotte Rampling on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," the scene where she dances and sings topless in a Nazi outfit was the first scene filmed.
According to writer and director Liliana Cavani, Charlotte Rampling (Lucia) declined doing another take of a fight scene between her and Sir Dirk Bogarde (Max) because many of the blows he threw were real.
The budget, which had been paid for by the Italian distributor, ran out near the end of the shooting of the film's interiors at Cinecittà in Rome. To ensure the film's completion producer Robert Gordon Edwards instructed editor Franco Arcalli to create a rough cut of the best scenes that had been shot, which he presented to an American colleague who worked at Les Artistes Associés (the French arm of United Artists). On the basis of the rough cut the company agreed to pay for the filming of the exterior scenes in Vienna in exchange for French distribution rights.
According to Liliana Cavani, Charlotte Rampling kept her four-month-old baby warm in a dressing room with a hairdryer as they were filming in January and it was quite cold out.