Legend of the Lost | | Cast : | John Wayne, Sophia Loren | | Director : | Henry Hathaway | | Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | December 17, 1957 | | DVD Released Date : | December 03, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | NR (Not Rated) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | March 22, 2005 | | Summary | A Pretty Good Flic | Content
 | I first saw this movie when I was 10 and was completely captivated. Of course, I've seen this movie on tv multiple times over the years and I never fail to fall under the movie's spell.
John Wayne as Joe January, drunken guide. Sophia Loren as Dita, a prostitute...do they ever look this good? Brazzi as a starry eyed treasure hunter and do-gooder. What a package. Henry Hathaway did a terrific job directing and Jack Cardiff does a terrific job with the photography.
Unlike other reviewers I think the soundtrack is perfectly aligned with the movie. The movie uses the desert as a fourth character. In the movie the desert is set up to be a strange and eerie place, especially the lost city they eventually end up in. Lost city, lost treasure, and finally a betrayl. The music supports this very well.
I give this movie pretty high marks. The story line is very credible. Brazzi's character shows up wanting to go into the desert to search for his father. Waynes character is hired. Before they can leave, Brazzi charms Sohia Loren's character and she manages to show up in the desert at Wayne's and Brazzi's first camp, escorted by desert nomads. Together the three travel the desert. They eventually end up out of water and stumble into a lost city, the real goal of Brazzi. Given some of the trite and predictable movies touted as good cinema today, even this movie makes them look pale.
Watch the movie for yourself. Unless you're one of those people that has to have a movie loaded with special effects, you should enjoy the experience.
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| Rating | | | Date | February 11, 2004 | | Summary | Strange movie invites unfairly harsh criticism | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 27, 2003 | | Summary | Somebody fell asleep at the wheel | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 14, 2003 | | Summary | Get lost in another time | Content
| 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? |
| Rating | | | Date | December 16, 2002 | | Summary | A Real Lost Classic | Content
| 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. |
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