Lost Horizon

Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt star in this lavishly-produced classic about the enchanted paradise ofShangri-La where time stands still. After nearly 50 years, Frank Capra's timeless masterpiece, LOST HORIZON (based on the best-selling novel by James Hilton) was restored to its original length of 132 minutes in 1986. The film, which was widely circulated among the armed services during World War II, was cut 22 minutes after its initial release in 1937 to reflect the wartime perception of the Chinese and to tone down the film's pacifism. Film historian Robert Gitt conducted nearly 13 years of detective work tracking down the lost footage. With extraordinary art direction, the set of Shangri-La is considered the largest ever built in Hollywood, winning designer Stephan Goosson an Academy Award(r) (LOST HORIZON won two 1937 Academy Awards(r): Art Direction-Set Design and Film Editing). Furthermore, the budget for the picture was staggering and cost almost four times the amount of any Columbia film at the time; an equivalent cost of approximately $30-$40 million today. A box office blockbuster, LOST HORIZON is considered an exception among Capra's work for its deviation from his usual upbeat "American" theme and continues to capture the imagination of the viewing public today.

James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon proposes a perfect hidden community within the uncharted Himalayas, a land where peace reigns and the inhabitants live for hundreds of years. So indelible is this mythical land that its name has entered the culture: Shangri-La. Director Frank Capra, riding high during his mid-'30s hot streak, spared no expense in creating Hilton's paradise onscreen, taxing the coffers of Columbia Pictures and the patience of mogul Harry Cohn. The results, however, are magical: shimmering, seductive, and maybe a bit foolish, truly the creation of an idealist (understandably, the spectacular art direction won an Oscar). And Capra's hero is an idealist, too. Ronald Colman, at his most marvelously elocutionary, plays a wise diplomat whose plane crashes in the snows of Tibet. He and the other survivors are guided to Shangri-La, where they wrestle with the invitation to stay. The young Jane Wyatt plays Colman's love interest, but leaving a more lasting impression are H.B. Warner, as the benevolent Chang, and Sam Jaffe, in great old-age makeup, as the wizened High Lama. This version has been restored as closely as possible to Capra's original cut; the film had circulated for many years in a trimmed form. Lost Horizon was remade, notoriously and hilariously, as a big-budget musical in 1973; it was a complete flop. --Robert Horton