Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Legend of the Lost!

Theme: Subcutaneous Phat - Desert Sessions

In the meme years, Sophia Loren is now chiefly remembered for this historic mogging at the hands of Jayne Mansfield:

M*n will never understand the murderous rage of a Casey out-Stacied.

But if being in even a single good movie were a category (it sure isn't at the Oscars), Loren takes the W hands down. Batjac gem Legend of the Lost (one imagines the word "City" might have rounded out the title before some clever clogs realised the title could refer to the protagonists as much as what they seek) sees Loren play petty thief and men-resenting thot Dita, whose hard-knock life in the alleys of Timbuktu must be self-imposed, as anyone who looked much like Loren could easily marry the first rich tourist she meets, but never mind. For some reason, like every Tinder foid, she's never met a moid to satisfy her laundry list of high-falutin standards until clean-cut idealist Paul (Rossano Brazzi) enters her life and introduces her to the radical notion of not being a resentful thot.

The hero we need.

But who's that other - why, it's John Wayne himself, of course, playing himself once more as "Joe January", a Dionysian cynic whose rough edges contrast sharply with Paul's goody-two-shoes schtick and whose disdain for wahmen matches Dita's for men. This unlikely trio seem an all-too-likely cast for an odd-couple (or odd-triad) action-adventure to find a lost city in the Sahara filled with jewels, an impression bolstered by the early scenes of obligatory good-natured broad humour typical of Batjac's unpretentious populism.

One early scene has a comic sleazoid seek out Wayne in this club (he's not even there; the scene is otherwise pointless) just so we can see this chick do this swimming dance:

I have no idea whether they do this dance in Mali IRL but I hope so. Email the government of Mali at MaliGov@whatever.com and ask.

But Legend soon strikes out in a surprisingly profound psychological and theological direction. Foreshadowed action scenes between our heroes and the Tuareg are deferred in favour of the elemental antagonists of heat, thirst, temptation and madness. Paul's goodness and Joe & Dita's badness are all tested. Featureless desert yields strange, beguiling beauty, and elaborate sets moan emptily with wind, which is appropriate because Legend has less in common with the Duke's thousands of crowd-pleasing westerns and more to do with Sjöström's silent psych-western opus The Wind, with its flawed men, neurotic women, and strangely cathartic hints of hope for their reconciliation.

They might not all make it, but we can.