This film was one of 1957's top grossers mainly due to the fact that in those years the public wanted exotic European location shooting and the film certainly does a good job of showing Greece and Sophia Loren who is ravishing.The story is a thriller.Alan Ladd plays a archaeologist ,Sophia a poor sponge diver and Clifton Webb an unscrupulous collector of art.The plot is not really that important.What counts is the scenery and Sophia.Alan Ladd whom I have always considered as a very good actor, but underrated by critics does a good job,like always(he always tried his best), all the more so that his partner was really very much taller than him and he suffered from that.I don't understand why everybody made so much fuss about Alan Ladd's size.He was just as short or tall as Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney or even George Raft.The film is very enjoyable.

This is an amazingly lifeless movie despite it being filmed in Greece and being Sophia Loren's first American movie. While the Greek scenery is lovely, it's obvious that the biggest reason they chose Ms. Loren for the film was because of her ample breasts. Throughout the film, but particularly in the first diving scene, they are featured very prominently and it's a very risqué piece of film work for the 1950s (sort of like the movie THE DEEP in the 1970s). And, unfortunately, she is given a role that is very inconsistent and not particularly likable. Much of the movie concerns her wanting to help steal a valuable ancient statue she accidentally discovered while sponge diving. She is, through much of the film, amoral and self-centered. And, not very convincingly, at the end, she falls for Ladd and does the right thing with the statue! Predictable but also a bit ridiculous.

Now to make things worse, some boob had the bright idea of pairing Loren with Alan Ladd--one of the shortest leading men of all time and about four inches shorter than her. This meant they had to do some interesting camera-work so she wouldn't tower above him. In addition, their chemistry is, at best, tenuous despite this being a love story. There just doesn't seem to be any "spark" between them. As for Ladd, his role is pretty mellow and subdued. Apart from some scuba diving, he just doesn't do all that much in the film. The bottom line for Ladd, Loren and the rest of the characters is that the parts just weren't written all that well and the people (aside from her little brother in the film) weren't very interesting or compelling. A dull time-passer and certainly no indication of the acting ability of either of its stars.