Customer Reviews

Legend of the Lost (1957)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

LEGEND OF THE LOST is a total wipe-out. Not a single redeemable sequence in this absurd tale of buried treasure out in the desert. What were Wayne and Sophia Loren thinking, signing on for this tripe? And director Henry Hathaway had been around for decades, couldn't he see the train wreck this was? Even the unintentional howlers aren't enough to keep you awake. Simply dreadful!

liked this adventure with duke and sophia....desert intrigue, love triangle and hidden treasure. worth the price.

Who thinks up the character names? Joe January (John Wayne) drifter, Dita (Sophia Loren) of ill repute, and Paul Bonnard (Rossano Brazzi) bible thumper, teem up to look for a lost city and possibly a lost treasure. Paul has a map, Joe knows the territory, and Dita is fun to look at. There are a few inconsistencies and maybe not the best music but you can get lost in the story and have fun speculating as to what is happening next.

When they get to their destination they find more than a city. They find themselves and it isn't pretty.

So who gets what? Is there really a treasure? And just who is the good guy?

I had just seen Houseboat and really wanted to catch another Sophia flick. There is a criminal lack of her movies on DVD. With all the harsh criticisms of this movie, I bought it hesitantly only because I couldn't find many Sophia movies. There's a strange flavor to this movie, almost as if something about it was experimental. The story doesn't have a strong punch line by the end, but it does come to a logical conclusion that some may not find satisfying, but I did.

The best part of the movie were the good lines they gave John Wayne and the great comic timing with which he delivered them. In this movie he seems to have perfected the kind of character Harrison Ford played in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. While Sophia Loren is breathtakingly beautiful, with her talent and ability to project personality, she would still be fun to watch even if she was as plain as a blank sheet of paper. (Thank goodness she is gorgeous, though.)

Maybe what disappoints some people is that this movie appears to set itself up to be a wild action adventure, but instead this is more of a character development story before the time this kind of thing was popular in the late 1960's and early 1970's. It's a good movie to display some of the Duke's abilities to display the kind of character he often plays from a different perspective. And of course, Sophia is Sophia, bless her heart, and the packaging it comes in.

It is often fun to overly critize films made in other decades that often reflect a different attitude to what worked for audiences then. My memory of this film as a teenager stands up better than my views upon seeing this DVD resurrection. For instance, as soon as I saw the name Kurt Krasner in the credits this time, I recalled that it was a common practice to use certain actors over and over again, even though they were badly miscast each and every time. Mr. Krasner is cast as a French policeman in Timbuktu. The actor was often cast in exotic, foreign sounding roles. The problem was that, in Legend of the Lost, he never attempted a French accent. In fact, he never changed his accent or his delivery in any of his films. Ever! The fight scenes between Brazzi and Wayne (there are far too many of them) are amaturish; one camera angle actually shows Brazzi throwing a punch that misses Wayne's jaw by a good 12 inches! Where was the director, Henry Hathaway, a seasoned vertan, when this happened? The soundtrack element used for this DVD transfer was very poor; it has a thin, tin-like quality. I've heard better in the various TV versions of this film. I find that to be true of many DVD's. I'm glad I rented this DVD rather than simply relying on my memory and buying it outright. That saved me some hard-earned money.

This is not a great movie... but it is a GRAND one. It is also one of my top ten favorite movies of all time... because it is so "atmospheric"... it is one of those wonderful movies that will literally transport you to a different time and place. The lush musical score (which does NOT sound "science fiction" at all, if anything it more closely resembles the scores of the old Roman gladiator genre films), the wind in the sands and beautiful Sophia, at her technicolour best, make this film great fun to watch. How could you top such lines as "I can cook, I can live, I can breathe!" and the Duke putting the make on Sophia Loren who retorts "Oh no, NOT YOU!!" Well, this is definitely a movie to curl up with on a rainy Sunday morning. This film is less of an adventure film and more a story of 3 very different people who's lives are brought together and how they play against each other. Fantastic.

I saw this movie decades ago and I liked it a lot as a young man;
and I saw it about a year ago and I still liked it. It is one
of those movies were a group of people follow the steps of
an adventurer who either never comes back or does come back but
makes wild claims that almost no one beleives, e.g., King
Solomon's Mines,Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Lost
World.

Although this film isnt considered among some of her best.... I have always considered it one of my favorites of her english language films primarily because of the main theme....redemption. Each character faces some kind of redemption in the plot of the story, and there is the score...which is haunting....Set in the backdrop of the african desert, the score conveys the barreness of the desert and the ghosts of the secrets it holds, ... the quest for lost treasure..intermingled with lost lives finding each other in some way....thru redemption

"Legend of the Lost" is a morality tale of sorts which follows the journey of three disparate souls searching for lost treasure in the vast Sahara Desert. The trio is comprised of Joe January, played by John Wayne, who is a hard living, hard drinking guide; Paul Bonnard, a would-be missionary played by Rossano Brazzi; and Dita, portrayed by Sophia Loren, who is a prostitute and petty thief transformed by Paul's piety.

The sought-after treasure was originally discovered by Paul's father. But when it is revealed that his father is not the saint Paul thought him to be, Paul is corrupted. Greed and lust overtake him eventually leading to tragedy.

Paul's instantaneous and wicked conversion seems somewhat preposterous as he had purportedly lived a virtuous life up until the discovery of the treasure and the remains of his father. The entire plot strains credibility.

But it is the motley and gifted cast that fascinates. Wayne's Joe January is a crude, hard-bitten soul. But underneath that rough exterior, you know that he is a decent man especially since he is portrayed by Duke Wayne. Wayne has a reassuringly quiet strength and an unselfconscious vulnerability that always make his characterizations believable. Wayne's characters are strong men, but not super men (ala Schwarzenegger or Stallone). His characters are realistic. They can be brought down, hurt, and compromised.

Rossano Brazzi gives an almost giddy, operatic interpretation of a good man gone bad. It's amusing to watch his character degenerate. And Sophia Loren has an untamed beauty and wild impetuousness which is electrifying.

So perhaps one can forgive the hokey plot of "Legend of the Lost", the occasional poor sound quality, and the rather cheesy musical score. It is the charismatic, talented cast and the magnificently sun-drenched, barren landscape of the Sahara Desert that make this movie rather thrilling and worth your time.

One of Sophia Loren's greatest and most sexy performances. An absorbing, exotic film, and all around great treasure hunting adventure. And the Duke, well ... he's the DUKE !!! All movie connoisseurs savor this desert classic time-after-time.