Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Yet Wayne, Loren, Brazzi all together and at the top of their form and status as stars!And not just Wayne, Loren and Brazzi but a script by Hecht and Presnell and cinematography by Cardiff. Should have been a blockbuster.Instead a studio-like programmer focused on a Saharan adventure and getting everything wrong. For example, making Timbuktu a part of French Morocco, complete with belly-dancers and corrupt Prefect. And a hackneyed plot, recycled from everything from She to King Salomon's Mines. Apart from Wayne, Loren, Hecht and Cardiff, this movie has absolutely nothing going for it.Except for Wayne, Loren, Hecht and Cardiff.As ridiculous as it is, Legend of the Lost is very much a vehicle highlighting all of the principles at their best. Wayne as Joe January (are you serious?) pulls off Hecht's tongue-in-check dialogue effortlessly as well as his character's jovial lechery, with Loren doing the same as a sexy-as-hell bad girl, flashing a lot of leg and coming just short of repeating her Boy on a Dolphin wardrobe malfunction. All the while projecting a serious intelligence as well as sex. Even Brazzi makes his character dramatically believable. Add to all of that the energetic extras and you've got the makings of a great Graphic Comic.Which, I think, is the standard Legend of the Lost should be judged by. Especially when you add Cardiff's cinematography, which even many of the negative reviews praise. The visuals, editing and production values are outstanding.Before its time or, more likely, a happy accident, Legend of the Lost seems to have suffered more from audience expectation than its success at doing exactly what it set out to do. I don't think it was ever meant to be anything except a fun romp through a territory already well trod and familiar, as such, to its audience. What we would call today a 'Little' movie.And that's where, I believe, all of the negative reviews come from. When you've got Superstars as principles, especially in the 50's, you're going to expect The Ten Commandments or Gone with the Wind, not Harold and Maude. Reacting according.So, in my opinion, Legend of the Lost is a small gem worthy of serious reconsideration. Suspend your disbelief, dump the Big Stars expectations and just watch the visuals (the score's pretty good too) and you might be rewarded.A final note: the movie begins with the Prefect marching down a street followed by his entourage, each element of which is separated, given 2-3 seconds to drive home the point, as the Prefect inspects his territory (which includes its own little intriguing snippets) and finally meets up with the Important Foreigner (Brazzi). As a tone setter, I thought it was brilliant.Correction and blame the lame Web algorithms: I tried French Timbuktu and French Mali, coming up goose eggs on both. Turns out the French mistook Mali for the Sudan (not a big surprise) soooo .... The French were in charge of Mali, Timbuktu and a lot of other West African territories in 1957. Even so, Timbuktu still never looked like Morocco, French or no French.

When America's manliest man hooks up with Europe's hottest lady, the result should give you something to see. Instead, "Legend Of The Lost" fizzles away its powerhouse casting on a grim desert adventure flick that's more disappointing than bad.Joe January (John Wayne) is a desert guide stuck in Timbuktu when his services are enlisted by the mysterious, kindly Paul Bonnard (Rossano Brazzi). Bonnard, it turns out, is on a treasure hunt, following the trail of his long-lost father. Along for the ride, against January's wishes, is a prostitute named Dita (Sophia Loren) who sees Bonnard as a source of redemption."I like my chippies in a room," January fumes, establishing his ornery character early.Never mind Wayne and Loren, the star of this production is Jack Cardiff, the film's cinematographer. His shots of the trio making their way along the Sahara's dunes and setting sun are worth taking in, even if the story being presented isn't.Ben Hecht co-wrote the script with Robert Presnell, but if you are expecting snappy one-liners or blazing action, look elsewhere. Instead, what you are fed here is a lot of pious mumbo-jumbo from Bonnard about man being the only unkind animal, or else overemoting Dita screaming how the touch of men are like bugs to her. Wayne has the easiest job just playing himself, making sly eyes at Sophia but mostly behaving himself.January is the one with the doubts about Bonnard's expedition; he doesn't buy the holy-man thing and is very dubious about the objective: "The desert is full of bones that went looking for treasure." As the movie goes on, the trio manages to find the place they seek, whereupon the trouble really begins.Like I say, the photography is magnificent, so much so you get right away what Dita means when she says she feels so much smaller in the desert. But what passes for drama is negligibly absurd. Dita freaks out when a tarantula falls on her dress. Bonnard shoots a whisky bottle out of Joe's hand. A brief encounter with wandering Tuareg tribesmen goes nowhere.Brazzi manages some interest early on, but the script requires his character to make an impossible transition in an effort to jimmy up some last-minute suspense. Loren has her moments, but her conversion early in the film is likewise abrupt and unconvincing. Kurt Kasznar provides some comic relief in the first 15 minutes, mostly by acting greedy and speaking with a campy French accent.Director Henry Hathaway made some great films, including Wayne's "True Grit." Here you can see he has a feeling for Wayne, who looks great in his leather jerkin and Indiana Jones hat and exudes competence whether unhitching a mule or taking a slug of whisky. But Brazzi and Loren have the tougher parts, and they get no help from the abrupt manner in which Hathaway presents them.The ending is really a puzzle; it seems like the story doesn't end so much as run out of time. It's not hard to imagine Wayne wanting to get out of Libya and declaring a wrap before Hathaway did. If shooting "Legend Of The Lost" was anything like watching it, I can't say I blame him.

An amazing film, totally out of the ordinary, almost unknown today, deserves refreshing, very much reminding of the classic silent "Greed" by Erich von Stroheim - it's the same atmosphere, the same desperate passion, the same hopelessness, the same drama intensity in a totally outcast state as far from reality and civilization as possible, only, this is in colour, this is exotic, this is flesh and meat, and here is Sophia Loren.She actually makes the film. From her first scene you catch yourself watching only her, and her character is the most complex and fascinating. John Wayne is as he always has been, he could only play himself, while Rossano Brazzi more credibly matches Sophia. His tragedy touches on the absurd, but on closer scrutiny his development into psychosis is perfectly logical. The script (Ben Hecht screwing it up as always) is perfectly watertight in its complex turnings and sudden surprises in the winding labyrinths of the relationships, constantly taking the audience aback, and to this comes the fascinating story of the quest for a lost city in the middle of the Sahara - this also brings "The English Patient" into mind.But above all it's a passion play, three is never good company if one of them is a woman and she is beautiful and irresistible at that for both the men, and the passion is played out efficiently in the ruins of the failed archaeological enterprise with the ecstasy and agony of Rossano Brazzi as the heart of the matter at the mercy of hopeless love and delusion. No matter how much he falls out you tend to like him better than John Wayne, who is so hopelessly crude in his simplicity.There are even some hints at "Mackenna's Gold" in this in part even rather mystical drama, as the omens of the skeletons add an extra touch of marvel.

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. ***