Wissenswertes

Errico Malatesta, who is quoted at the end of the film, was an Italian anarchist propagandist and revolutionary socialist. He edited several radical newspapers and spent much of his life exiled and imprisoned, having been jailed and expelled from Italy, England, France, and Switzerland. After World War I, he returned to Italy where his Umanità Nova, an anarchist newspaper, had some popularity before its closure under the rise of Mussolini. Malatesta was a committed revolutionary. He believed that the anarchist revolution was inevitable and that violence would be a necessary part of it since the state rested ultimately on violent coercion.

For the initial American release, editor Fima Noveck created a prologue which featured a montage of photos of Mussolini, along with a crawl explaining his rise to power and the violent activities sanctioned in his name during his reign. Also, in this edit, the full Italian title is not displayed, in favor of the abbreviated English title Love and Anarchy.

Salome is known from the New Testament, where she is not named, and from an account by Flavius Josephus. She is the daughter of Herod II and Herodias, granddaughter of Herod the Great and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas. In the New Testament, the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas demands and receives the head of John the Baptist, who was an itinerant preacher active in the area of Jordan River in the early 1st century AD. The gospel story of her dance at the birthday celebration of her stepfather, who had John the Baptist beheaded at her request, inspired art, literature and music over an extended period of time. In the arts, she is depicted as the personification of the lascivious woman, a temptress who lures men away from salvation.