It stars Jill Clayburgh, Matthew Barry, Tomas Milian, Fred Gwynne, Veronica Lazăr, and Alida Valli.

It received mixed reviews from critics, though Jill Clayburgh's performance was widely praised, earning her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.

Embracing, they reaffirm their love for each other, and together the son and his father, who has come to watch the performance, and who now knows Joe's true identity as his child, hear Caterina sing at her very best.

In his two-star review, the critic Roger Ebert wrote of Bertolucci "He's got a soap opera and a Freudian case history (traditional enemies in their natural states) and he's forcing them to copulate".

[3] In an entry dated 7 September 1979, Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky wrote in his diary, "Saw Bertolucci's La luna.