Main Cast: John Wayne, Sophia Loren, Rossano Brazzi, Kurt Kasznar, Sonia Moser
Release Year: 1957
Country: PA/US/IT
Run Time: 109 minutes
Plot
Produced and directed by Henry Hathaway, The Legend of the Lost boasted the one-time-only teaming of John Wayne and Sophia Loren. Location-filmed in the Sahara desert, the story concerns the efforts of Wayne, Loren and Rosanno Brazzi to locate a missing treasure in the ruins of ancient Timgrad. Once found, the treasure is stolen by Brazzi, who leaves his partners in the middle of nowhere to die like rats. Fortunately, Wayne and Loren survive the ordeal, though Brazzi is not so lucky. Of the three stars, Brazzi delivers the most interesting performance, while Wayne and Loren seem ill-at-ease throughout. The best aspect of this sometimes ponderous effort is the color cinematography of the great Jack Cardiff. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Henry Hathaway's Legend of the Lost (1957) was one of a small group of unusual late '50s films starring John Wayne in which the actor tried stretching himself in new roles. The other of those films and roles, including The Sea Chase (casting him as a World War II German ship captain), The Conqueror (as Genghis Khan), and The Barbarian and the Geisha (as a 19th century U.S. diplomat in Japan), were mostly missteps. Legend of the Lost, however, is interesting enough to make it worth watching, as one of the more successful of these experiments. Wayne portrays Joe January, a hard-drinking, hard-loving guide and adventurer -- prone to owing lots of money and spending a fair amount of time in jail -- with a sardonic wit, living in North Africa. It's close enough to the kind of part that Wayne often played that he can pull it off, and Rossano Brazzi's portrayal of Bonnard, the disillusioned (and ultimately insane) idealistic missionary who hires him, is interesting enough, and sufficiently offbeat in a John Wayne movie so as to make it all the more worth watching. What's more, the interaction between the two characters is drawn very nicely in a script that's clever enough to have Wayne's character allude derisively to King Solomon's Mines and the usual treasure-hunting fantasies associated with Africa. Their journey takes a violent and unusual psychological twist, though, when the real story of the Bonnard's father emerges. That revelation, amid the eerie setting of a dead North African city, is both unexpected and memorable. Additionally, cinematographer Jack Cardiff uses the film's exotic locales for all they're worth, capturing extraordinary images on the desert and in the ruins -- one shot in particular, of Bedouins appearing from over a rise in the distance, behind Bonnard as he speaks, is one of the scariest and most unsettling visual moments you'll find in an action-adventure film of this vintage. And, finally, as an international production, the producers of Legend of the Lost were able to cast Sophia Loren as Dita, a character who could be labeled as what she was -- a prostitute -- more clearly than ever would have been the case in a Hollywood production (not that they ever call her that outright, but it's made clear that her character's talents and activities extend to more than just picking pockets). The European-style scoring (with lots of wispy flute Arabesques, and reverb) is also an offbeat virtue. The one place where Hathaway and the script go awry is in the fight between January and Bonnard on the desert while en route to their destination; it lapses into slapstick when Dita bops Wayne on the head with a frying pan, and then takes several minutes to recover its bearings. Wayne and Hathaway would later collaborate much more successfully on The Sons of Katie Elder and True Grit, but apart from its one lapse in tone, Legend of the Lost now seems like a genuinely effective experiment by Wayne, at a time when few of his efforts to step beyond Westerns and war movies were working out. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
In Timbuktu, experienced guide Joe January (John Wayne) reluctantly joins a Saharan treasure hunting expedition led by Paul Bonnard (Rossano Brazzi), a man obsessed with confirming his dead father's claim to have found a lost city. Dita (Sophia Loren), a woman of dubious reputation, becomes infatuated with Paul and his willingness to overlook her past. She invites herself along, despite Joe's protests. During the tough dry ordeal, Joe and Dita become attracted to each other, raising tensions.
Just as they run out of water, they stumble upon the ancient city and a well. There, they find three human skeletons, a woman and two men. It becomes evident that Paul's father found his woman in the arms of his guide, killed them and then himself. There is also no treasure to be found. Paul's faith in his father is shattered and he becomes drunk.
Then they find the treasure, just where Paul's father had described. They load it and prepare to leave in the morning. However, Paul sneaks away in the night, taking all the animals, supplies and treasure with him and leaving the other two to die.
Joe and Dita chase after him on foot and eventually catch up. The two men fight. Dita is forced to shoot and kill Paul. When they spot a caravan, Joe and Dita are saved.
Cast and crew
Legend of the Lost was directed by Henry Hathaway. Wayne and Hathaway worked together nine times, beginning with The Shepherd of the Hills (1941) and ending with Wayne's Oscar-winning role in True Grit (1969). Co-author Ben Hecht, nearing the end of his career at this time, was one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriters. None of this talent managed to keep Legend of the Lost from being harshly reviewed by critics.
Wayne liked the location work in Rome and Algeria. The plot is vaguely similar to another of Wayne’s movies crossing the Mojave desert. The Roman remains of Timgad in Algeria were used extensively as a location for the ancient city. In the script Wayne's character refers to 'Timgad' in sardonic reference to the apparent delusions of Paul's father, despite the fact this places a considerable strain on the geography of the plot.
This film was Wayne's only collaboration on film with international cinema stars Sophia Loren, and Rossano Brazzi.
