The last cinematic version of the story was made in 1961, which is understandable as this is the time after which the Lost World cinema died off. This version of L’Atlantide is naturally revisionist. It is certainly a well-mounted production. Unlike most of the previous productions it does go on location and to Morocco, which is in the book’s specified North African location. Unlike every other version it locates itself in the Victorian period the book was set in, which naturally evokes the Great Age of Exploration. The film tells quite a lengthy build-up concerning the friendship between the two men, their mutual affair with a Spanish diplomat’s daughter who poses as an Arabic man, and the suicide of Morhange’s wife due to his affairs. Well over half-an-hour is taken up by this before we even get into the desert. Certainly it makes for an intriguing backstory and the film’s evocation of French-colonized Algeria and its mysterious back streets is well done.

Unfortunately this is much more exciting than the arrival at the lost city proves to be. This is a revisionist version of the Benoit story so almost everything about the lost city that the previous versions contained is reversed. Instead of a spectacular city of Grecian pageantry, this city is a set of dim and dusty ruins. There are some occasionally striking shots of huge stone heads in the sand and giant burning crosses, but this lost city is decidedly lacking in spectacle. And rather than casting a vampish Hollywood star as Antinea, the film casts Black American actress Victoria Mahoney who looks only about 18 and is entirely lacking in any of the epic ethereality and fatal mysteriousness of the preceding Antineas. She seems more young and confused rather than radiating anything in the way of seductive mystery – it is hard to see what it is about her that men are prepared to die for.

Lastly though the film eschews any fantastic elements. The idea of Antinea being immortal is thrown out and instead are substituted some unclear suggestions about her being the bastard daughter of one of the archaeologists. So too dispatched is the great kitsch element in the previous films with her keeping a museum of her preserved lovers’ bodies. The film may have been wise in throwing out these fantastic elements as they probably would not have worked today, but instead all it produces is a second half that is slow paced and doesn’t really go anywhere.

Other version of L’Atlantide include Jacques Feyder’s lost silent French version L’Atlantide (1920); G.W. Pabst’s celebrated German version L’Atlantide (1932) with Brigitte (Metropolis) Helm, which was shot simultaneously in French, English and German; the kitsch Hollywood version Siren of Atlantis (1948) with Maria Montez; Edgar Ulmer’s B-budget The Lost Kingdom/Atlantis, City Beneath the Desert/Journey Beneath the Desert (1961) with Jean-Louis Trintignant; and a French tv version L’Atlantide (1972) with Ludmilla Tcherina.