LEGEND OF THE LOST is a 1957 Hollywood movie from popular director Henry Hathaway, here teaming with star John Wayne for one of many times. It's unusual to see Wayne starring in something other than his usual western and war movies but he fits the role quite nicely here and plays his typical tough-talking, hard-bitten character, this time acting as a guide in the Sahara desert for a man searching for his lost father.As usual, the desert landscape is in itself a character and becomes an effectively hostile backdrop for the proceedings. The movie was shot in Libya so has an air of authenticity to it. Aside from Wayne, the viewer gets glamour and romance from Sophia Loren, while Rossano Brazzi brings most of the character as the man being driven out of his mind by his father's fate.It's fair to say that LEGEND OF THE LOST has some silly moments, such as the tarantulas appearing out of nowhere to attack Loren. Still, it's an adequate enough piece of adventure, one with an effective last half an hour as the desert itself becomes the enemy and the characters struggle to survive against the odds. Wayne is on form, as ever, and the drama of the climax makes up for the slow parts earlier on.

" . . . 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.

Scallywag desert veteran Joe January is bailed out of prison to act as a guide for Paul Bonnard. Bonnard is in Timbuktu to search for treasure in the Sahara, something his now missing father set off to do some time before. Along for the journey is Dita, a low moral woman who caught Bonnard's good will during a set-too in the town earlier. So January sets off with his suspicions on full alert, women and treasure!, has to be a recipe for trouble...surely?I can't dress it up, Legend Of The Lost is just about watchable for a few comic moments and it's decent enough production values. John Wayne {Jones}, Sophia Loren {Dita} and Rossano Brazzi {Bonnard} star in what on paper looked to be a real good thing. Three actors who can arguably lay claim to having a volume of fans to rival those of the Hollywood heavy weights past and present. Yet it doesn't quite come together, it lacks an adventure spark that the story clearly hints should be there. It's not helped by Brazzi and his inability to act, he is someone who continues to baffle me in how he managed to get mainstream cash work in the first place. Loren as usual, pouts and teases the men on screen and the boys in the audience, but do we care? Actually no. During her moments of peril, one can't help hoping that Duke Wayne will shoot her to ease all the suffering of the viewers.Ah, bless The Duke, for he be the one bright acting spot in the picture. In fine physical shape and clearly knowing that tongue in cheek is the best way to play this one, Duke enjoys himself and hopefully his fans can get a modicum of enjoyment from this badly casted piece. The location work in Libya is real nice {Jack Cardiff once again delivering fine photography}, with the desert sequences enhanced by the always pleasant Technicolor. But don't be kidded that this is a character study worth venturing into, for if it didn't have the star names attached to it, they would have burned the negative long before release. 3.5/10

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.