Legend of the Lost

This is a really underrated movie and i stayed away from it for so long because of all the bad reviews i've seen of it, like Leonard Maltin giving it only two stars. This was directed by Henry Hathaway and this was the first time John Wayne and Hathaway worked together and they would go on to make four more movies, including True Grit. The movie starts out with Rossano Brazzi looking for a guide to take him through the Sahara desert to find a lost city. Brazzi hires Wayne as his guide and Sophia Loren is a women who tags along, against Wayne's wishes. Wayne finds out Brazzi is looking for a lost city full of gold and thinks he is crazy and wants to turn back. It's a underrated movie and one of Wayne's better films.

It is a good combination to have strong John Wayne together with attractive Sophia Loren in a film, which was complemented with the acting of the Italian Rossano Brazzi. The film in fact is just an invention, everything starts in Timbuctu, an area populated by Touaregs and today part of Mali in West Africa, which at the time of the film plot was under the French domination. Here you have an American (Wayne)trying to celebrate 4th July there, then a white prostitute (Loren) and a French "Lord" (Brazzi). Wonder how a white prostitute and an American were able to reach that far area as Timbuctu. At present a plane flies daily from Bamako to Timbuctu, and to go by road is not advisable. Another fiction is to find a river in the Sahara. In any case, the best is to forget the origin of the subjects and its fictions in the film and to follow the plot, which is of value. Love may be developed after continuous talks between people, poor and non educated ones may like to be rich, but in several cases their sense of solidarity prevails over the ambitions, and this is what we find in the film, a good example of cruel egoism and also human solidarity. The best is that the egoist does not win finally.

Legend of the Lost paired John Wayne and Sophia Loren for their one and only teaming on the silver screen. Too bad it wasn't in a much better film than this barely disguised rip off of Rain.

The setting for this film is French West Africa as it was then known in 1957 before it became several new African countries in a few years. The Duke is Joe January, a freebooting American expatriate who hires out as a guide on the desert.

Rossano Brazzi wants to hire Wayne as a guide to take him to a fabled lost city that he swears his father found out in the middle of the Sahara. The father disappeared on a return trip and Brazzi is also looking to find out what happened to him.

In Timbucktu both of them encounter Sophia Loren who's a working girl. She's got the both men going, but it's Brazzi she really loves. Brazzi's a spiritual sort of fellow, talking about doing some good for the native population. When they go out in the desert, she trails after them.

They find the ruins of what was an old Roman city, bet you didn't know the Romans got that far south. Brazzi also learns what happened to his father with a letter found on his remains and two other human remains and some forensic conclusions. For the rest of the story if you've seen any adaption of Somerset Maugham's Rain you know what's going to happen.

I have to say that on the plus side Jack Cardiff's color cinematography of the Libyan desert because that's where the film was shot is breathtakingly beautiful. The rest of it is kind of silly. Forgetting the fact that Sophia with two men on the desert is going to lead to obvious complications, I cannot believe that Wayne was taking booze on the trip. In his role here and in real life Wayne was a prodigious drinker. But alcohol except some small amount for medicinal emergencies is an outright hazard on the desert. The sun will dehydrate you that much quicker if you keep drinking alcohol as well as water. Not to mention traveling by day instead of by night.

My conclusion is that since this was a Batjac production, John Wayne wanted to do something that could be classified as arty. Since he had already done well in The Long Voyage Home, I'm not sure what he felt he had to prove.

I do wonder what Somerset Maugham must have thought when he saw this film though.

This film is invaluable for its exquisite production values. It should not be missed for '50s costuming and make-up conventions, however improbable for a desert expedition. In addition, the no-show direction left all three principals to their own devices; and their natural strengths and weaknesses as performers are exposed. John Wayne fares best here, as he has never been more charismatic...or done more with less of a script. Brazzi fares worst, being unconvincing as a rival to John Wayne and as a romantic match for Sophia Loren. Pay close attention to the fist fight among the three adventurers. You will see each punch miss by at least a foot and a half.

Legend of the Lost is a film that could have been pretty good, but was destroyed because of the lack of chemistry between the leads, John Wayne and Sophia Loren. They don't relate or react to each other at all, and every "intimate" scene between them seems forced.

On the bright side, you have cinematographer Jack Cardiff's gorgeous on-location Technirama cinematography. The deserts of Libya never looked so good. And the script by Ben Hecht was actually quite good.

But Legend of the Lost is a member of an entire genre (or sub-genre) of films that might best be called "Two-person Films." That is, the entire film centers on two or three characters that are somehow isolated from society and exist on their own in some desolate or deserted place. John Huston was a master of this genre, and his films The African Queen and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison may very well be the best examples of the genre. Unfortunately for Legend of the Lost, this type of film mandates that there be great chemistry between the leads, or the whole film breaks down. Look at the great chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen and the great chemistry between Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. This is where Legend of the Lost begins to come apart. Wayne was an actor who was legendary for his ability to relate to his leading ladies on screen. Throughout his six decade long career, he played opposite a wide variety of actresses (from Jean Arthur to Marlene Dietrich to Lauren Bacall to Katharine Hepburn) and was able to light up the screen with just about all of them. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the chemistry between him and Loren just wasn't there. In hindsight, of course, its easy enough to clamor for Maureen O'Hara (who had done similar roles in the many "Arabian Knights" type adventure films she had spent most of the 40's doing), but I do give Wayne credit for taking a chance on the then almost unknown Loren. Unfortunately, things just didn't work out.

Veteran director Henry Hathaway directed Legend of the Lost, and after its failure placed most of the blame on Loren, saying something to the effect that she was gorgeous to look at, but wasn't a very good actress. Although he might have had a point, Hathaway was also likely trying to deflect blame away from himself for the failure. The fact remains that he failed to overcome the casting problems that beset the film. And this is why Hathaway is remembered as a good, but not great director (and I say this as Hathaway's biggest fan). The great directors have the ability to elevate a film above script and casting problems, and Hathaway failed to do that here. Of course, Hathaway would say that given the material and genre it would have been very hard, if not impossible to do that here. And he may very well be right. In hindsight it might have been better to get John Huston himself to direct the film, though considering Wayne and Huston's equally disastrous joint project The Barbarian and the Geisha was still waiting in the future, perhaps its better Huston wasn't involved here.

I've always felt that Legend of the Lost was Batjac's attempt at a "prestige picture." I think that Wayne was trying to impress the critics by producing an "artsy" film that would appeal to them, and when it failed, he went back to the familiar places and faces that he had found success with earlier in his career. It was probably a very wise decision on his part.

Legend of the Lost is not for everyone. With different casting the film could have become a classic. As it is, it survives best as a remembrance of "what might have been."