Rosi considered realizing a documentary, but fearing the Italian censorship, since many political protagonists he wanted to denounce were still in charge at the time, he chose a fictional story instead. He however added a note by the end of the movie: "The characters and facts narrated here are fictional, but the social and environmental reality that produces them is real".
Real left wing politicians appear in the movie as actors, most notably Renzo Farinelli, a journalist and head of Socialists in Naples, and Carlo Fermariello, trade-unionist and Communist senator.
Rod Steiger's character comments that he looks too much like Benito Mussolini. Stegier would play Mussolini later in Mussolini - Die letzten Tage (1974) and Omar Mukhtar - Löwe der Wüste (1980).
During the trial sequence, all the journalists were portrayed by real-life journalists, some of which were famous Italian film reviewers.
For this movie, Rosi was granted in 2005 a honorary degree ("laurea honoris causa") in Urban, Territorial and Environmental Planning at the University of Reggio Calabria.