In order to obtain the covering insurance needed to put the film into production, Michelangelo Antonioni (who was still recovering from a severely debilitating stroke) had to agree to have a secondary director on staff, ready to take over from him at any time. His choice, Wim Wenders, even provided the prologue and epilogue for the film.
In the original edited footage (which was more than two hours long) the sex scene between Peter Weller and Chiara Caselli was longer and showed the actor performing an explicit cunnilingus to the actress. It was Wim Wenders who asked Michelangelo Antonioni to cut that part. "The scene starts off well, but becomes unbearable when it doesn't end and at the end it heavily touches the limit of pornography," he said.
In the Peter Weller's diary of working with Michelangelo Antonioni (included in Projections 12 book), the actor recalled that in this scene the director ordered Caselli to be 'Tutta nuda' (Totally naked), allowing him to take off only his shirt, and then he ordered him to kiss all Caselli's body. Weller then asked Antonioni: "Cosa vuoi? Che io mangio la sua fica?" (What do you want? Have I to eat her pussy?). At that moment assistant director Beatrice Banfi and Antonioni's wife intervened to prevent the sexual act from happening, but Antonioni sent them off the set and asked Weller to continue. So only after Weller put his head between Caselli's legs and started actually licking her vagina for a while, Antonioni called the scene to a close.
Caselli confirmed to have suffered for that scene and asked if Peter Weller was embarrassed too, she answered: "Not at all: on the contrary...".
The opening fogbound scenes are a reminder of a similar passage in Antonioni's own Identification of a Woman (1982).
One of the segments reunites Marcello Mastroianni with Jeanne Moreau who appeared together in Antonioni's La Notte (1961).