An American diplomat functionary in the Middle East is assigned to find a senator's grown daughter, who has fled without a word, in this 1978 adaptation of the James Michener novel. The setting is 1948 in the fictional country of Zadestan (standing in for Afghanistan in the original novel). Ellen Jasper (Jennifer O'Neill), daughter of a prominent American politician, has abandoned her marriage to a Zadestanian Colonel (Behrouz Vossoughi) and run off to the nomad caravan of a Kochi Chieftain, Zulffiqar (Anthony Quinn), traveling the desert by camel. Michael Sarrazin is the American diplomat Mark Miller who tracks down the caravan and then joins it when Ellen refuses to leave, ostensibly learning about this way of life disappearing from the modern world. In fact, what the film offers is a cliché-riddled story involving clashes between the oppressed Kochi and the military government and a subplot involving smuggling guns through the desert with pauses to explore the quaint customs of desert life, from joyous dances to eye-for-an-eye justice to comic scenes with a testy camel. Anthony Quinn brings an unforced authority to the aging tribal leader but even his performance brings no clarity to his vague, apparently platonic relationship to Ellen, a woman who has given up her rights as an American since her marriage to the colonel and whose continued presence in his caravan draws unwanted attention from the authorities. A co-production between Hollywood and Iran, it has all the hallmarks of a sweeping exotic romantic epic, with colorful costumes (the film's sole Oscar nomination), beautiful desert landscapes (it was shot in Iran before the revolution), and a lush score by Mike Batt, but it lacks both the romance and the drama one expects from such a spectacle and suffers from clumsy, clichéd dialogue. Christopher Lee has a small role as the colonel's father, who sees the runaway wife as a stain on the family's reputation, and Joseph Cotten has an even smaller part as the American ambassador. The film takes great liberties with Michener novel and, by the time the film was released, the revolution was underway in Iran, taking some of the romance out of the project. Features commentary by film historian Evgueni Mlodik. Not recommended. (S. Axmaker)