The Wind And The Lion (1975)

In 1904 Morocco, an American widow (Candice Bergen) and her two children (Simon Harrison, Polly Gottesman) are kidnapped by a desert Berber leader (Sean Connery). Ostensibly for gold but in reality, the Berber pirate hopes to humiliate the Sultan (Marc Zuber) who he believes is a tool of the Europeans. While the director and writer John Milius has given the film the trimmings of a political allegory about imperialism, at heart, the film is a reworking of the Rudolph Valentino THE SHEIK with Connery as the handsome and exotic desert pirate and Bergen as prim and proper westerner who falls hopelessly under his spell. Some of the film is surprisingly prophetic as to the rise of Islam in the contemporary world but it works best as a swashbuckler. Still, some of the casting is questionable. Couldn't Milius have put something in the screenplay along the lines of "My nanny was from Edinburgh" to explain Connery's Scottish accent? Bergen has the requisite haughtiness the part requires but some of her line readings are incredibly stilted. But the film isn't a cheat. It has the look of a genuine epic and the desert hasn't looked this good since LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (though it was filmed in Spain) thanks to cinematographer Billy Williams (GANDHI). The spectacular score, one of his best, is by Jerry Goldsmith. With John Huston, Brian Keith as Teddy Roosevelt, Geoffrey Lewis and Vladek Sheybal.