Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

kols 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.

Edgar Allan Pooh " . . . 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.

ma-cortes Timbuktu is the background of this mostly entertaining tale about three characters , an adventurer scout named Joe January (John Wayne) , an archaeologist (Rossano Brazzi) and a gorgeous girl (Sophia Loren ) in search for a lost city in the desert called Ophir and a fabulous treasure hidden.John Wayne leaves his Stetson and horse for a camel in this exotic adventure set in Sahara desert plenty of Tuaregs , sandstorms , mirages and amazing dangers . This exciting picture is packed with adventures, action , thrills , a loving triangle and is quite amusing . Interesting screenplay by Ben Hetch , Billy Wilder's usual writer. Breathtaking cinematography with luminous and bright colors by Jack Cardiff . Atmospheric and evocative musical score by the Italian Angelo Francesco Lavagnino . The motion picture is professionally directed by Henry Hathaway. He had a reputation as being difficult on stars, but some actors such as Cary Cooper , Marilyn Monroe -Niagara- and especially John Wayne , The Duke , benefited under his direction . Big John played for Hathaway various films as ¨The sons of Katie Elder (65), ¨Circus World (64) ¨ certainly not one of his memorable movies , ¨How the west was won (62) ¨, ¨ North to Alaska (60)¨ , but his greatest hit smash was ¨True grit (69)¨ in which Wayne won his only Academy Award . Although Hathaway was a highly successful and reliable director film-making within the Hollywood studio system , his work has received little consideration from reviewers . Rating : Acceptable and passable , well worth watching . The film will appeal to adventure buffs and John Wayne and Sophia Loren fans .

moonspinner55 Colorless title for a dishwater-dull adventure saga starring John Wayne, Sophia Loren, and Rossano Brazzi, three disparate characters crossing the Sahara desert in the same direction as Brazzi's ill-fated father, who went missing ten years prior after finding a lost city stocked with rubies and emeralds. Wayne, playing a desert guide/troublemaker down on his luck in Timbuktu, drawls like he's still back on the range, while Loren has little to do but tease the two men unconsciously; apparently she isn't aware of her amply carnal charms--and though she's playing a streetwise prostitute, whenever the two men get randy around her, she pulls away screaming, "No! Don't touch me!" Brazzi has it the worst however, initially preaching enlightenment to Sophia in a brotherly way, later forcing himself upon her, but just as quickly turning on both his companions like a dirty dog. It's a hopeless role, and indicative of the patchy, puzzling screenplay. This movie has enough peaks and valleys to redesign any desert, and the final crawl isn't dramatic or gripping or emotional--just wasted time on the clock. ** from ****