Twenty years before Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep, 20th Century Fox had Sophia Loren emerge from the water in a wet shirt and seemingly no bra... and in CinemaScope. It's the highlight of a by-the-numbers treasure hunting scenery piece. For all Loren's beauty and voluptuous figure, her performance is irriating - a lot of hyperactive yelling (in Hollywood of the 1950s most Continental leading ladies had to yell a lot) - though to be fair it was her first Hollywood movie.According to Alan Ladd's biographer, Ladd was annoyed at the attention paid by the director to Loren, giving her close ups, etc - but honestly Ladd is not in good form here, with energy in some scenes but lethargy in others. He does provide some fun when you watch scenes between Ladd and Loren and you know he's on a box or she's in a ditch. Clifton Webb can always be relief on to be a smooth villain and there are some pleasing location footage of Greece (once Daryl F Zanuck left Fox, studio president Spyros Skouras indulged in this liking for Greek material more eg this, The 300 Spartans, It Happened In Athens, the hiring of Peter Levathes). Apart from that, the film lacks excitement, which wouldn't have been too hard to fix - just get someone trying to kill Ladd or have accidents with his equipment and stuff.
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