Lost Horizon (1937)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Frank Capra

Writers:

Robert Riskin (screenplay)
James Hilton (novel)

Release Date:

1 September 1937 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery

Tagline:

Millions to make it ! . . . Two years in production ! . . . The best seller that set a new style in romance floods the screen with splendor and drama surpassing Frank Capra's greatest past achievements. "Mr Deeds" and "It Happened One Night".

Plot:

A plane crash delivers a group of people to the secluded land of Shangri-La -- but is it the miraculous utopia it appears to be?

Plot Keywords:

Shangri La | War | Diplomat | Revolution | Utopia

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 5 nominations

Cast

Ronald Colman	...	Robert Conway
Jane Wyatt	...	Sondra
Edward Everett Horton	...	Lovett
John Howard	...	George Conway
Thomas Mitchell	...	Barnard
Margo	...	Maria
Isabel Jewell	...	Gloria
H.B. Warner	...	Chang
Sam Jaffe	...	High Lama

Also Known As:

Lost Horizon of Shangri-La (USA) (reissue title)

Runtime:

132 min (original version) | Finland:128 min (restored version) | USA:95 min (TV version) | USA:118 min (general release version) | West Germany:97 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Mandarin

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Finland:K-16 | Germany:6 | Portugal:M/12 | UK:U | USA:Approved (PCA #2061) | Norway:7 (original rating) | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Bronson Caves, Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Its budget was $1.5 million and the film ultimately cost almost twice as much as that, a sum significantly higher than most of Columbia's other output combined.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Lovett and Henry debate directions, Lovett has the box in front of him, and in the next cut his coat and arms are on top of the box.

Quotes:

High Lama: It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision, long, long ago. I saw all the nations strengthening, not in wisdom, but in the vulgar passions and the will to destroy. I saw the machine power multiplying, until a single weaponed man might match a whole army...
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Simpsons: Lost Verizon (#20.2)" (2008)

Soundtrack:

Wiegenlied (Brahms' Lullaby), Op. 49, No. 4

For those who have not lost hope

I watched this film for the first time as a 10 year old and its effects on my willingness to be a optimistic idealist have always been led by my memories of this hope inspiring tribute to the need for the human being to find Heaven in this life. Perhaps Lost Horizon could have been that spark that enabled me to find just that. Like all films from another era do not judge this film for its apparent imperfections, rather for what it offered the audiences of that time (1937), hope that all would be well when man would recognize that his time is always better spent broadening his horizons of understanding. Frank Capra's guides his audiences through danger and turmoil to that place which dreams are made of, when we all make the effort to make it happen.