The working title of this film was "Umlaut: The Klaus Mann Project."
The title Sophisticated Acquaintance originates from a quotation from Terence Kilmartin's translation of Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance of Things Past/À la recherche du temps perdu. The Narrator, in this translation, refers to his parents' friend Swann as a "sophisticated acquaintance" whose presence deprives him of his mother's goodnight kiss.
Although this is the first feature-length film that Daniel Kremer directed, it is not the first feature that he released. There was an unreleased and unexhibited - but nonetheless complete - version left behind from 2007. Kremer spent the better part of ten years editing, re-editing, shaping and reshaping the material, struggling to render the film to his liking. In May 2016, he finally reached a satisfactory release cut.
Partly inspired by Ken Russell's early made-for-BBC biopics, which often blended fiction, documentary, and experimental forms, in stylized renderings of specific artists and their bodies of work. Kremer also cites the work of filmmaker Peter Watkins as a key influence on this film.
Daniel Kremer: [Handwritten letters] Gia's final letter to the dead Klaus, and the letter-writing between Klaus and Andrew. Andrew discusses the power of a handwritten letter in a world increasingly monopolized by technology.
Daniel Kremer: [Movie within the movie] A television broadcast of D.O.A. (1950) distracts Klaus while he writes an essay.