In the Heat of the Sun accepted to Beijing Film Academy) and became successful actors. The Chinese version of the Soviet song "Moscow Nights" features prominently in the film, as does Pietro Mascagni's music for his opera "Cavalleria Rusticana". The film was commercially successful in China. In contrast to the Cultural Revolution-set films of Chinese 5th-generation filmmakers (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang) which put the era into a larger historical setting, "In The Heat Of the Sun" is mellow and dream-like, portraying memories of that era with somewhat positive and personal resonances. It also acknowledges, as the narrator recalls, that he might have misremembered parts
Cavalleria rusticana was as the theme for a regular radio broadcast, "Symphony of the Rockies," which featured "a small string group playing light classical music" in the 1930s and 1940s over Denver radio station KOA, then owned and operated by the NBC network. It "was a 'feed' to the entire network from the KOA studios." Apart from video recordings of live performances, there have been several cinematic versions of "Cavalleria rusticana", the most notable of which are: The opera's symphonic Intermezzo has figured in the sound track of several films, most notably in the opening of "Raging Bull" and in the finale