Legend of the Lost

This is a really underrated movie and i stayed away from it for so long because of all the bad reviews i've seen of it, like Leonard Maltin giving it only two stars. This was directed by Henry Hathaway and this was the first time John Wayne and Hathaway worked together and they would go on to make four more movies, including True Grit. The movie starts out with Rossano Brazzi looking for a guide to take him through the Sahara desert to find a lost city. Brazzi hires Wayne as his guide and Sophia Loren is a women who tags along, against Wayne's wishes. Wayne finds out Brazzi is looking for a lost city full of gold and thinks he is crazy and wants to turn back. It's a underrated movie and one of Wayne's better films.

Considering that for most of this film there are only three characters on screen and two of them are very badly played by John Wayne and Rossano Brazzi, (the third is a sultry looking Sophia Loren and she's very good in an underwritten role), Henry Hathaway's "Legend of the Lost" is a surprisingly entertaining piece of nonsense, complete with lost treasure and some gorgeously photographed desert locations courtesy of Jack Cardiff. There isn't much else yet Hathaway manages to keep us watching, maybe with a promise that something is going to happen even if in the end, it hardly ever does. It's success probably had a lot to do with the Westener's love of deserts and exotic locations, (maybe there's a touch of the T. E. Lawrence in all of us). It's hardly the best of Hathaway but there's no denying it's very enjoyable.

Legend of the Lost paired John Wayne and Sophia Loren for their one and only teaming on the silver screen. Too bad it wasn't in a much better film than this barely disguised rip off of Rain.

The setting for this film is French West Africa as it was then known in 1957 before it became several new African countries in a few years. The Duke is Joe January, a freebooting American expatriate who hires out as a guide on the desert.

Rossano Brazzi wants to hire Wayne as a guide to take him to a fabled lost city that he swears his father found out in the middle of the Sahara. The father disappeared on a return trip and Brazzi is also looking to find out what happened to him.

In Timbucktu both of them encounter Sophia Loren who's a working girl. She's got the both men going, but it's Brazzi she really loves. Brazzi's a spiritual sort of fellow, talking about doing some good for the native population. When they go out in the desert, she trails after them.

They find the ruins of what was an old Roman city, bet you didn't know the Romans got that far south. Brazzi also learns what happened to his father with a letter found on his remains and two other human remains and some forensic conclusions. For the rest of the story if you've seen any adaption of Somerset Maugham's Rain you know what's going to happen.

I have to say that on the plus side Jack Cardiff's color cinematography of the Libyan desert because that's where the film was shot is breathtakingly beautiful. The rest of it is kind of silly. Forgetting the fact that Sophia with two men on the desert is going to lead to obvious complications, I cannot believe that Wayne was taking booze on the trip. In his role here and in real life Wayne was a prodigious drinker. But alcohol except some small amount for medicinal emergencies is an outright hazard on the desert. The sun will dehydrate you that much quicker if you keep drinking alcohol as well as water. Not to mention traveling by day instead of by night.

My conclusion is that since this was a Batjac production, John Wayne wanted to do something that could be classified as arty. Since he had already done well in The Long Voyage Home, I'm not sure what he felt he had to prove.

I do wonder what Somerset Maugham must have thought when he saw this film though.

This film is invaluable for its exquisite production values. It should not be missed for '50s costuming and make-up conventions, however improbable for a desert expedition. In addition, the no-show direction left all three principals to their own devices; and their natural strengths and weaknesses as performers are exposed. John Wayne fares best here, as he has never been more charismatic...or done more with less of a script. Brazzi fares worst, being unconvincing as a rival to John Wayne and as a romantic match for Sophia Loren. Pay close attention to the fist fight among the three adventurers. You will see each punch miss by at least a foot and a half.

I first saw this film on television as a kid in the 1960s and loved it. I have seen it many times since, and am now blessed to watch it on DVD in wide screen on an LCD display, and I continue to enjoy it. Okay, it has some corny lines, and Sophia is just too beautiful... but more than that, this film tells a wonderful story of broken promises, hidden agendas, and betrayal from others we believed were above reproach... and there is some terrific character development in the dialog, I feel I know these people. For me, it is one of the most atmospheric films I have come to know. I feel the hot Sahara sun in that Lybian desert, the wind blowing sand in my face, the coolness of the water in the oasis, and the quiet beauty of a desert twilight. This film is haunting to me... and it is one of my very favorites.