Actors - Lost Horizon

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	Actors - Lost Horizon

Lost Horizon is a 1937 film directed by Frank Capra starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, John Howard, Margo, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton, Isabel Jewell, H.B. Warner, and Sam Jaffe.

It tells the story of a group of travelers who find a utopian society in the Himalayan mountains. The film is based upon the James Hilton novel of the same name. The film was adapted by Sidney Buchman (uncredited) and Robert Riskin. The Streamline Moderne sets were by Stephen Goosson.

Fleeing unrest in China, a small group of airplane passengers is hijacked by a silent pilot. The plane eventually runs out of fuel and crashes high in the Himalaya mountains, killing the abductor. The group is rescued by Chang (Warner) and taken to Shangri-la, an idyllic valley sheltered from the cold. The contented inhabitants are led by the mysterious High Lama (Jaffe).

Initially anxious to return to "civilization", most of the group grow to love the place, including academic Alexander Lovett (Horton), swindler Henry Barnard (Mitchell), and terminally ill Gloria Stone (Jewell), who miraculously seems to be recovering. High-ranking British diplomat Robert Conway (Colman) is also enchanted, particularly when he meets Sondra (Wyman), who has grown up in Shangri-la. However, Conway's younger brother George (Howard) and Maria (Margo), another beautiful woman they find there, are frantic to leave.

Robert Conway eventually learns that his arrival was no accident. He has been brought there by the High Lama to take his place. The founder of Shangri-la claims to be hundreds of years old, preserved like the other residents by the magical properties of the paradise he has created, but is finally dying and needs someone wise and knowledgeable in the modern world to keep it safe.

George refuses to believe the Lama's fantastic story and is backed up by Maria. Torn between love and loyalty, Conway reluctantly gives in to his brother and they leave, taking Maria with them. After several days, she becomes exhausted and falls face down. When they turn her over, they discover that she has died...of old age. Her departure from Shangri-la had restored Maria to her true age. Horrified, George loses his sanity and jumps to his death.

Conway continues on and eventually meets up with a search party sent to find him, though the ordeal has caused him to lose his memory of Shangri-la. On the voyage back to England, his remembers, tells his story, and escapes. The searchers track him back to the Himalayas, but cannot follow him any further. In the final scene, Conway returns to Shangri-la, to the waiting Sondra.

Artistically, Lost Horizon evokes many of the themes associated with director Frank Capra as an auteur but is somewhat darker and at times, cynical, as with much of his early work. This is particularly exemplified by the somewhat ambiguous ending.

No complete original print of this movie survives. Several years after its initial release, an "edited" version was presented for viewing audiences, a version which aimed to downplay the supposed Communist themes associated with the utopia as well as limit the sympathy shown towards the Chinese, whose relationship with the American government grew strained in the years following World War Two. A total of twenty-two minutes was cut from the originally released version. A combination of the collapse of the production code and an interest in restoring old films resulted in a project in the 1970's to find an original print of the film. As is often the case, this meant examining archives of early Hollywood films overseas, where reels were frequently neglected. The original soundtrack was recovered intact, but six minutes (spread out over several scenes) remain either compromised or lost. Consequently, subsequent releases of Lost Horizon on both video and DVD run the entire soundtrack, substituting a combination of deteriorated footage, stills, and publicity photos. Some viewers of the film find these sequences rather jarring and confusing, but it is generally agreed that many of these scenes are crucial to the film's continuity, both for enjoyment and as a historical archive.

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Actors - Lost Horizon

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