Best movie ever!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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.

" . . . with God as a Front," screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote for Joe January to say toward the end of LEGEND OF THE LOST about John Wayne, knowing that the self-styled "Il Duce" would prove too dense to put two and two together, and never realize that the movie's title and this line of dialogue amounted to the most fitting epitaph Wayne would ever have. Eager young Democrat John got into some sort of a lover's tiff with one of the boys (most likely a Jew) back in the 1930s, and decided that he would destroy an entire sector of American Society in Revenge. With the help of a few venal Hench People such as Hedda Hopper, this literal Death Star was the chief author of the Un-American Congressional Inquisition Committee, Joe "I-have-no-decency" McCarthy, the National Rifle Association's coup taking over America's government, the Reagan Presidency, the Iraq Invasion, and nearly every other Evil on our planet today. If World War Two started because an Austrian corporal flunked out of Art School, Armageddon surely will be engraved with Il Duce's John Hancock. Once you realize that Hecht is cleverly making Wayne witness to his own depraved existence with LEGEND OF THE LOST's "Paul," this flick should make a lot more sense to you.

Henry Hathaway had something in his hands few director's would ever dream of having. A winning combination, to include the screen strength of John Wayne (Joe January) the sexual allure of beautiful Italian goddess, Sophia Loren (Dita) and dashing leading man, Rossano Brazzi (Paul Bonnard,) all in the same film. The Legend of the lost is one of those particular film which should have become a superb adventure/drama, which in turn should have evolved into a classic. But like a Formula One Car which should win the international Gran Prix, unfortunately run short of fuel. The story is that of three people all searching for something which it seems lies beyond them. January seeks enough money to break free of the monotonous cycle of drunken nights in jails, Dita hoping to find someone who appreciates her for herself and not just one night stands and Bonnard, hoping to find a desert treasure left to him by his father. All three struggle against themselves and their weaknesses and then at the temptations which cause them to remember why they failed the first time. Against them is the limitless Shahara which is unforgiving and more than a challenge to lesser adventurers. Expected steamy scenes between the story characters in the novel are abandoned and disappointed viewers are resigned to the "Romance-Lite" they are given. A good film if you don't expect too much from such international greats. ***

Colorless title for a dishwater-dull adventure saga starring John Wayne, Sophia Loren, and Rossano Brazzi, three disparate characters crossing the Sahara desert in the same direction as Brazzi's ill-fated father, who went missing ten years prior after finding a lost city stocked with rubies and emeralds. Wayne, playing a desert guide/troublemaker down on his luck in Timbuktu, drawls like he's still back on the range, while Loren has little to do but tease the two men unconsciously; apparently she isn't aware of her amply carnal charms--and though she's playing a streetwise prostitute, whenever the two men get randy around her, she pulls away screaming, "No! Don't touch me!" Brazzi has it the worst however, initially preaching enlightenment to Sophia in a brotherly way, later forcing himself upon her, but just as quickly turning on both his companions like a dirty dog. It's a hopeless role, and indicative of the patchy, puzzling screenplay. This movie has enough peaks and valleys to redesign any desert, and the final crawl isn't dramatic or gripping or emotional--just wasted time on the clock. ** from ****