The first thing I did when opening your post, was to play the music by Zatsepin and thought: This type of movie music is used frequently in movies back in time. And then I realised you did talk about an older movie and its music :)

Claudia Cardinale...WOW thats a long time ago I've seen her in a movie. 3 decades to a little more ago I used to watch many of the older movies from between the 20's, 30s and 70's. I think I never seen this one. I never knew (or realised) some of these movies are released with different music and composers.

Who is better, Morricone or Zatsepin? Don't have an opinion yet, need to listen to Zatsepin more as well as Morricone. Both created music in Walz style. Not completely my favourite, hence I'm not sure how Morricone is doing with that type of music (I know much more his later works).

I hear you, the music of Zatsepin may not be that well known in the 'west' or outside Russia, while the producers took a sure bet by bringing in Morricone (I suppose this was in times when Morricone got or became famous with his music for Sierra Leone's spaghetti westerns?). I'm wondering why they didn't use either Morricone also in the Russian edition, or indeed Zatsepin for the 'western' edition. What I do know, is that marketeers had their influence back then already, shown by the way they approached the market with this movie and its music. That in itself is a bit of a shame :(