The now famous long take that begins at the top of the hotel, then winds around and down into the swimming pool, originally come out of the water and continued. The camera was hand held, passed from crew member to crew member, to make its way down the side of the hotel into the pool. The camera lens had been equipped with a high speed, spinning glass disk taken from a submarine periscope. The spinning disk was installed to fling water drops off of the lens when the camera emerged from the swimming pool at the end of the shot. Much to the disappointment of the camera crew, director Mikhail Kalatozov cut the end of the take, ending it underwater.
This film was made when the Soviet Union sent director Mikhail Kalatozov, who won the Palme d'Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival for his film 'The Cranes are Flying', to Cuba to make a film to celebrate the Cuban revolution. Kalatozoy arrived in Cuba the week after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion when the revolution was still being won and Cuban people remained optimistic about their future. Filming continued on, as well, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.
When released, the film was not shown outside of Cuba and the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union it was only shown at around 8 venues.
Fidel Castro, Raoul Castro, and Che Guevara took the film crew up to the Sierra Maestra mountains to show them where the revolution was fought. All three served as technical advisors to the film.
Soviet Union, who financed the movie, complained that the film focused too much about art for arts sake and not a film for the people's sake. Consequently, they brought charges of 'formalism' up on the director of the film, Mikhail Kalatozov.