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 .

Once you ignore the fact that there is almost no chemistry between the leads, John Wayne and Sophia Loren, you will probably enjoy this Indiana Jone-like movie. It's seldom shown on American TV, so you may have a hard time finding it. Perhaps this is because these stars have certainly made better films. I honestly think part of the problem with the chemistry is that the love between the two characters only reveals itself towards the end but most of the problem is that in hindsight you wonder WHO thought these two looked good together? It just didn't seem natural. Most of this, I think, was due to Wayne's being miscast as an adventurer in the African desert. You just don't expect to see Wayne there. Now if it had been the Mojave Desert in the good old USA, then it would have seemed more plausible.

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.