Trivia / Morte a Venezia

• California Doubling: The interior of Saint Mark's Basilica was actually a detailed reconstruction built at Cinecitta Studios. The real location was unsuitable for filming.
• Creator Backlash: Bjorn Andrésen has expressed his dislike of this film and the fame that it brought to him. The 2021 documentary, The World's Most Beautiful Boy, discusses how he was sexualized to the point of being repeatedly assaulted, and how the film caused him to be constantly Mistaken for Gay. His later acting career was a struggle to get out of this film's shadow.
• Fake Nationality: The German Aschenbach is played by the English Dirk Bogarde, and his wife is played by the American Marisa Berenson. The Polish Tadzio is played by Björn Andrésen, a Swede. His mother is played by Silvana Mangano, who is Italian.
• What Could Have Been:
  • José Ferrer was preparing a film adaptation in 1964, but it fell through.
  • Luchino Visconti considered Alec Guinness, John Gielgud, and Burt Lancaster for the role of Aschenbach. Lancaster lobbied especially hard for the part, and would later play a similar character in Visconti's Conversation Piece. As for Guinness, Tom Courtenay said after watching the film that he would have found Guinness much more believable "as the great composer" than he found Bogarde.
  • Visconti originally intended to cast a 12-year-old as Tadzio. He approached Leif Garrett, but he turned it down after his parents read the script.
  • Visconti asked Ida Galli, whom he'd directed in The Leopard, to play Tadzio's mother. She was forced to turn it down to a scheduling conflict with The Weekend Murders.
  • John Moulder-Brown (who later played Prince Otto in Visconti's Ludwig) was considered for Tadzio, but was deemed too mature for the part.