Lancaster had earlier played a similar manipulative huckster in the filmThe Rainmaker (1956).The film was very popular and a box-office hit - on a budget of $3 million, it grossed $11.3 million dollars.It was shot in the uncharacteristic and unfashionable aspect ratio of 1.33, in protest to the current prevailing trend for CinemaScope features.The film was nominated for five Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Score (Andre Previn)) and won three: Best Actor for Burt Lancaster (his sole Oscar win of four Best Actor nominations), Best Adapted Screenplay (Richard Brooks), and Best Supporting Actress (Shirley Jones with her sole Oscar nomination, known for her squeaky-clean role in TV""sThe Partridge Family)."As the threesome (Mathayus, Arpid, and the Sorceress) journeyed through the desert, they came upon Philos, who had presumably run away from Gomorrah.He was advised by rival general Mr.Wu (Dudley Digges) to take a plane (with the money) rather than on a train.The cunning and evil Yang, who was interested in controlling all the northern provinces of China, attempted to have him assassinated, and when that failed, lured him onto a train en route to Shanghai.In some ways, the two male leads represent the two dichotomous sides of life (e.g., light/dark, normalcy/aberration, attraction/repulsion, innocence/experience, perversion/love, virtue/base desires, etc.