Despite its dazzling technical and formal achievements, receiving excellent support, and the participation of the renowned team of Soviet cinematographers Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergei Urusevsky (winners of the 1958 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or for "The Cranes are Flying", another virtuosistic art film, and also in the midst of the Cold War), the movie was given a rather cold reaction by audiences. In Havana it was criticized for showing a stereotypical view of Cubans, and in Moscow it was considered naïve, not sufficiently revolutionary, even too sympathetic to the lives of the bourgeois, pre-Castro classes. Also, upon its original release, the movie never reached Western countries largely because it was a communist production, in the midst of the Cold War era, and the United States embargo against Cuba.