At the 1968 Venice Film Festival, the film was given an award by the International Catholic Film Office. The award was withdrawn after critical remarks by Pope Paul VI. After the festival the film was confiscated by Italian police and Pier Paolo Pasolini charged with obscenity, but acquitted.
Second part of Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Mythical Cycle" also including Oedipe Roi (1967), Porcherie (1969) and Médée (1969).
In Pier Paolo Pasolini's book "Teorema" he describes a book with a reproduction of a Percy Wyndham Lewis painting, but in the film the book instead has pictures by Francis Bacon.
In one scene, the father reads from Lev Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". Later in the garden, the visitor reads from the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.
This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #1013.