Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 1957 by Batjac (John Wayne)/Robert Haggiag/Dear Film Productions. Released through United Artists. New York opening at the Capitol: 21 December 1957. U.S. release: 17 December 1957. U.K. release: 2 March 1958. Australian release: 31 July 1958. Sydney opening at the Plaza (ran two weeks). 9,757 feet. 108 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Ill-matched trio seek treasure in the Sahara.COMMENT: Despite wondrous location shooting in the Libyan Desert around Gaudames and Tripoli, and in the ruined Roman-built city of Leptis Magnor, this ends up as a rather dreary movie, which certainly partly deserves its poor reputation. Admittedly, it starts promisingly. Kurt Kasznar makes a good impression as a venal official and the bizarre situation looks like developing into an intriguing "unlikely partners" yarn of dangerous adventures and hair-breadth escapes. Alas, for this sort of caper to take off – especially as it involves only three persons – well-rounded characters are absolutely essential. And these the two scriptwriters signally fail to supply. But not only are the principals forced to enact one-dimensional stereotypes, one cardboard cut-out (Brazzi) is suddenly thrown away in the last 20 minutes and a different bit of paste-board substituted. Unfortunately, Brazzi cannot handle the sudden transition at all credibly. Not that we blame him.On the credit side, however, the movie cost $3 million and a lot of that investment is right up there on the screen in Jack Cardiff's superb Technicolor renderings of the exotic desert locations. Lavagnino's eerily atmospheric music score also helps allay the tedium.The action set-ups occasionally reveal traces of director Hathaway's customary vigor. His handling of the players, however, leaves much to be desired. Brazzi is excellent right up to the end of the Leptis Magnor sequences, Wayne is content to swagger around in much his usual latter-day style, but Miss Loren proves a big disappointment. She starts ably enough, but once in the desert, she contributes virtually nothing.

Leofwine_draca LEGEND OF THE LOST is a 1957 Hollywood movie from popular director Henry Hathaway, here teaming with star John Wayne for one of many times. It's unusual to see Wayne starring in something other than his usual western and war movies but he fits the role quite nicely here and plays his typical tough-talking, hard-bitten character, this time acting as a guide in the Sahara desert for a man searching for his lost father.As usual, the desert landscape is in itself a character and becomes an effectively hostile backdrop for the proceedings. The movie was shot in Libya so has an air of authenticity to it. Aside from Wayne, the viewer gets glamour and romance from Sophia Loren, while Rossano Brazzi brings most of the character as the man being driven out of his mind by his father's fate.It's fair to say that LEGEND OF THE LOST has some silly moments, such as the tarantulas appearing out of nowhere to attack Loren. Still, it's an adequate enough piece of adventure, one with an effective last half an hour as the desert itself becomes the enemy and the characters struggle to survive against the odds. Wayne is on form, as ever, and the drama of the climax makes up for the slow parts earlier on.

spkisby A previous reviewer may be correct in identifying Lepcis Magna in promotional shots of Sophia Loren, but that Roman city was not used as a location in this movie. The ancient city is clearly Timgad and is referred to as such by John Wayne's character.The use of Timgad as a location is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this movie, notwithstanding the allure of Miss Loren. I thought so, anyway, when I first saw it on TV as a kid.I did not occur to me then, but, for a 'lost city' Timgad appears remarkably well maintained in this movie. The adventurers come across an archaeological site which clearly has had its streets swept regularly and various monuments reconstructed. Only the gift shop is missing.That the characters strike out from Timbuktu and arrive in northern Libya means they have traversed almost the entire breadth of the Sahara -surely an impossible feat, even for the indomitable Mr Wayne. His character is rueful when he name-checks the place, as well he might be, since a bus ride from Algiers would probably have sufficed!That he knows the name of the ancient Roman city was perhaps a favour to the Libyan tourist board.

Robert J. Maxwell Duke is wastrel Joe January, ensconced in the jail of a desert outpost. Sophia Loren is Dita, a "dance hall girl." Enter the gentlemanly Rossano Brazzi, who springs Duke and hires him as a guide to a destination in the far desert, and who converts Loren from her thieving ways into a good Christian. Brazzi is in suit and tie, pith helmet, and fancy leggings. He tells the roughly clad Duke that he's never been to the desert but has "read about it." He speaks with a foreign accent -- he's supposed to be French, the accent is Italian, but to Hollywood he was just a "continental," rather like the menu of a restaurant specializing in continental food. He speaks of finding a treasure with which he will build "a refuge for the needy." Here is the first exchange between him and Loren, who has just stolen something from him."Why did you steal it?" "Because I wanted it." "If you wanted it, why didn't you just ask for it?" (He gives the item back to her.) It's only a few minutes into the picture and already we know that Brazzi is a sissy, that he will not get the babe, and that he will run up against the Duke's solid bulk sooner or later.Duke sums him up very well, in his peerless Dukese phraseology. "I've met these do-gooders before. Mostly they want to do good for themselves."Actually, the film's plot is a torpid mixture of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," in which one of the trio goes paranoid, "Rain," in which the Reverend Davidson converts a whore and then floods out and attacks her, and "The African Queen," in which a mismatched couple travel alone through dangerous territory and come to love each other just as they think they're about to yield to the fathomless, cool, enwinding arms of death.The photography by Jack Cardiff is splendid. This is no "Lawrence of Arabia" but it makes good use of the Libyan desert and its vast, majestic expanses.In many ways it's the best thing about the movie. Certainly the role of the anti-feminist, hard drinking, plain spoken, practical, but not unperceptive man of the earth gave the Duke no trouble. He could have wired in his part by Western Union. He even wears that cavalry hat with the brim turned up in front, left over from previous movies. Sophia Loren is cute when she's mad. She's cute when she's NOT mad. But she's only in it because movies like this must have a beautiful woman for the men to come to blows over. And this IS one of those echt-Hollywood movies where the low-life Gypsy hookers have hair by Mister Kenneth, make up by Max Factor, and choreography by Agnes DeMille. A couple of the Arab gypsy girls are blond and blue-eyed but does it matter? Well, it matters not at all, any more than Loren's Italian accent matters.Loren to Brazzi: "Yew could leave the drims yewr fodder drimt." The film's most impressive feature: Some great photography of a Roman city in ruins in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place you want to settle down in and call home. It's here we learn that the Duke can read Latin. That's about the only thing that's liable to surprise you.