Rating: 
Summary: After sixty years, still our greatest screen utopia
Review: Few films of the 1930s expressed hope for humanity more beautifully than LOST HORIZON. And despite the events of the following few decades that would seem to put the lie to its beautiful optimism, it somehow seems to evoke a vision of human longing that is truer than many of the actual events that followed. This is a movie I truly love, and that despite the fact that one could easily critique it for its political and social simplicity, or any of a myriad of simplifications that make Shangri-la work cinematically although it could never work in actuality. I don't think anyone would claim that this was a realizable ideal. So what is its appeal?First, Capra in this film gave voice to the tendency towards escapism that lives within all of us, though not escapism in a bad sense. We look around the world, we sense the hard-to-escape stupidity of the whole affair, and we wonder why it isn't possible for all of us to live in harmony, lovingly, kindly. So, one of the things that Capra does is affirm not an actual political agenda, but those sentiments he sees as constituting humanity at its best. He makes us yearn for a better world. Second, Capra, having called us to recognize our own best qualities, asks us to aspire to realize those qualities in our lives, to be less obsessed with grasping after money, to be less vicious towards our fellow humans, to be less in a rush to get to god-knows-what destination, to take more care to know ourselves. In other words, we need to focus more on what is truly crucial in life, not what we have deemed important. We are all sleepwalkers, and Capra wants to use a vision of Shangri-la as a means to help us wake up. The cast does more than its share in selling Capra's vision. It is inconceivable that anyone could have been a better Robert Conway than Ronald Colman. That voice! Colman had been a star of the silent screen, but unlike many silent actors, he was much better suited for sound. That inimitable voice, that tended to go up on syllables that most English speakers would go down, gave his voice a singsong and poetic quality that was utterly unique. The supporting cast is solid, with veteran character actors like Edward Everett Horton and Thomas Mitchell adding their usual superb embellishments. But apart from Colman, the acting kudos unquestionably go to Sam Jaffe, who although only 46-years-old, unforgettably portrays the High Lama, who is hundreds of years old. The ethereal otherworldliness he imparts to the role is crucial in making Shangri-la feel real instead of merely silly. There is a great deal of silliness in the film, if one is determined to find it. All the nonwhites seem delighted to serve the white men. The design of the buildings looks curiously like the art deco of the 1930s. Shangri-la itself looks amazingly like certain parts of California. But this is one of those cases where I take Coleridge's advice to willingly suspend my disbelief, and take a couple of hours to enjoy a more optimistic hope for humanity.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic rendered merely great because it's too timid
Review: Frank Capra's least Capraesque film. Lost Horizon certainly stands out from the rest of his oeuvre. While many of his films involve a certain wide-eyed optimism about the world, in this one he actually built a place to embody those beliefs. Shangri-La is beautifully realized in this movie with its waterfalls, open air schools, animals, abundance of food and shelter and the relative absence of malice and class struggle. Lost Horizon tends to dwell on the idyllic for too long. George's loathing for the place seems completely out of left field. Why isn't he won over like everyone else? I would assume his love interest had persuaded him, but what drives her hatred for the place? Had these questions been explored a great movie could have been a classic.
Rating:
Summary: Finest US movie ever produced.
Review: Lost Horizon is the best adventure, romantic movie ever made. It is superb in all respects - cinemagraphic, sound, set, story, acting, etc. One movie that is better than the book. It is a forever dream. I first saw Lost Horizon when it first came out and eill never forget it. Don;t miss this one!!!!!
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Summary: Frank Capra's Masterful, Fanciful Paradise of Lost Worlds
Review: Based on the novel by James Hilton, "Lost Horizon" is a metaphor for everyone's desire to live a simple, honest and meaningful life. When an American diplomat and his brother crash land their plane somewhere in the frozen mountains they, and their entourage, are rescued by a mysterious crew of mountain people and taken to the mythical village of Shangra-La - a magical, timeless kingdom presided over by a Dali Lama (Sam Jaffe). It must have taken all the courage executives at Columbia Pictures could muster up to hire Ronald Colman for the lead and then alot the film the biggest budget ever for a movie until that time. The gamble paid off, though it was not the super hit that the studio was hoping for. Still, there is something decidely unsettling and moving about the movie and its story that continues to compel a new generation to journey to a land where fear and poverty do not exist.
Unfortunately, several intervening factors have ensured that Frank Capra's masterpiece is given a disappointing treatment on DVD. First, the film was heavily cut several years after its initial release so that it might play better for a post WWII audience. The excised footage has presumably been lost for all time. Inserted into this DVD are still photographs and voice overs to fill in for those missing story elements. Also, no original camera negative exists for this movie. The resulting footage assembled here is a mix of various generations of film stock that unfortunately show the excessive ravages of age. There's a lot of film and digital grain to muddle through on the way to Shangra-La. Oh well, who said getting to your own private Utopia was going to be easy. The soundtrack is not bad but it is strident and very unnatural sounding. Extras include a little comparative analysis of the film, then and now, that illustrates just how bad the original negative looked before the Library of Congress got a hold of it in the mid-eighties and did considerable work. Still, this film needs much, much more. As a movie I highly recommend this release. As a DVD I can not in fair conscience say that it's worth the money.
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Summary: How Frank Capra wanted it to be...
Review: This DVD is the one you should watch. The DVD not only has the 132 minute version, as close as you can get to the initial release. The DVD has great special features, a photo documentary, restoration commentary, the alternative ending, subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Thai!
And just look at the stars: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, John Howard, Margo, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton and more!
True, John Howard's character is a tad trigger happy, but the rest do a very good job.
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Summary: My all time favorite movie!
Review: THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE! If anyone out there does not yet have it, by all means get it (for repeated home viewings). The theme is eternal and Frank Capra did a good job presenting it in movie format. It's been preserved and restored for viewing by all later generations.
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Summary: Timeless Classic Wonderfully Restored
Review: The Restoration of this significant film was done exquisitely. The quality of the picture was superb, and in those 5 minutes or so of lost video and only sound (spread throughout the film) well done stills fill the screen during the soundtrack.
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT FILM. Its relevancy today is just as important as to when it was released. The High Lama's talk on the state of humanity rings very true - even today. How sad that humanity has not progressed in the 60 some odd years that this script was written. A wonderful tale that imparts some nice wisdom. This is a movie and a tale of pure quality, an inspired story which will raise your hopes and spirits. A real family flick if there ever was one. We are lucky to have this Humanistic triumph available! A true soul stirrer which ahs to be seen at least once in a lifetime!
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Summary: Paradise Regained
Review: Although it quite brashly Americanizes James Hilton's novel, Lost Horizon emerges as a beautiful, moving classic. A real sense of mystery and suspense is built up, and the sets - including the 'artificial' storm-buffeted mountains - are brilliantly effective. The real beauty of Lost Horizon comes, however, near the end: torch-bearing natives chanting as they ascend the mountain to the lamasery; Jane Wyatt's passionate flight to stop Ronald Colman abandonning Utopia; and the latter's emotional goodbye to the Valley of the Blue Moon, from the narrow doorway to the Himalayas. The score is perfect, as is most of the acting. But although the film is a fable about Man's search for Utopia, and a romantic fantasy, it is also an optimistic affirmation of the possibility of return to the past, to lost happiness. Whereas most of the time, in life, good things exist only to pass, eventually, we see Ronald Colman finally managing to find Shangri-La again. The bells ring out, the film ends, and we are moved: he has found his dream, and won't let it go again.
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Summary: LOST HORIZON 1937 PRODUCTION
Review: The original 1837 production is superior to the later makeover, which I saw ib Thailand. The Thai audience laughed in the wrong places, such as when the Russian girl reverted to her true age on leaving Shangri-la. It is a good story. the Shangri-la hotel IN Singaporegave copies of the book to guests in 1970.
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Summary: Is this how the West imagined Tibet in 1937?
Review: The film, its restoration, the director, the actors, and the comparison between the book and film have been commented upon extensively and expertly in previous reviews. Since the story firmly places Shangri-La in Tibet, and since Frank Capra employed a "Tibetan expert" throughout the filming of Lost Horizon, it's not pointless to spend a little time on the subject of the real-life Tibet vs. the Tibet in Lost Horizon. In the 1930s, this film surely must have mesmerized its audiences with its depiction of Tibet as a utopian land of magic and mystery nestled within the forbidding folds of the Himalayas. However, knowing what we know about Tibet and Buddhism today, it is difficult to be fully taken in by the fantasy world depicted in the film. Clearly the author of the story and Frank Capra must have known something about the real culture of Tibet, as did the "Tibetan expert" who assisted Capra in the making of the film. However, upon watching the film today, one must conclude that they knew only the most rudimentary scraps of information about Tibetan culture, or they completely abandoned the truth in favor of the vaguely Asian Hollywood fantasy-world that was conjured up for the film. If the latter is true, I understand completely, but then why use a "Tibetan expert", or for that matter, why bother to call the land Tibet at all? The first thing we see as the film reveals Shangri-La for the first time is a rather authentic looking Buddhist Stupa, seemingly a good sign of authenticity to come. But then things radically depart from there to a world only Hollywood of the 1930s could have imagined. The ordinary inhabitants appear to be of Asian ancestry, and wear clothing that appears to be vaguely inspired by Chinese clothing of the time. Some of the men wear robes that seem to have some basis in the robes worn by Tibetan Buddhist monks. These Asian characters function almost entirely as peasants, manual laborers, and servants, which is largely how Americans saw Asians in the 1930s. Tellingly, the principle characters in Shangri-La, in other words the movers and shakers of this society are all non-Asians, speak perfect English, and dress in clothing that appears to be created by a costume designer who may have encountered Chinese clothing once in a magazine, and then tried to duplicate it from memory for the film. Forget about authentic Tibetan clothing...you won't find a trace of it here. Perhaps the most ludicrous distortion in the film is the role of the "High Lama", who in 1930s Tibet would have been the Dalai Lama, who is first and foremost, a Buddhist monk. In the film, the High Lama is portrayed almost inexplicably as a Belgian priest, a Christian priest to be precise, who speaks of a society that will someday realize true Christian values. I can't quite figure out the motivation behind this absurd premise. Either this is a reflection of the extreme ignorance prevalent in American society at that time regarding the culture of Tibet and the true nature of Buddhism (an atheistic, and certainly non-Christian religion), or it is a purposeful revision of the truth to make it more appealing (or less repellent) to American audiences, who may have been looked disparagingly upon Buddhists if truthfully depicted as non-Christian atheists, or it is a reflection of the prevalent Christian belief that all non-Christians in the world must eventually be converted to Christianity. It seems clear to me that Tibet was regarded as a land so mysterious and magical that audiences of the 1930s could easily buy into the fantasy that it could contain a place like Shangri-La, which almost surely was inspired by the city of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. It is also clear that the Dalai Lamas that had ruled Tibet for centuries up to that time were so mysterious and magical that they were the inspiration for the 200 year-old High Lama character in the film (perhaps a vague nod to the Buddhist concept of rebirth, which could have been interpreted by Westerners at that time as immortality). Furthermore, it is also clear that the Potala Palace sitting on a high plateau overlooking Lhasa provided the inspiration for the similarly imposing, if distinctly non-Tibetan lamasery in the film. For me at least, the whole premise would have been much more ahead of its time, and much less ridiculous if it had stayed closer to the real life facts about Tibet and its culture and religion, which were so clearly the inspiration for the story. Or, if total fantasy was the goal, it would be much easier to be completely sold by the story if they had simply situated Shangri-La somewhere in the Himalayas and left it at that, without ever mentioning Tibet. If they had done that, we could marvel at the similarities between the mythical Shangri-La and its philosophies and the real-life Tibet and Buddhism. Instead, we can only marvel at how grossly misinformed Capra and his crew were on the subject of Tibet, its people, and its culture, and thus how ludicrous their version of Tibet is from a historical perspective. Fortunately, as Americans, we've come a long way since the 1930s in learning about the various countries, peoples, cultures, and religions with whom we share this world, as this movie sometimes painfully illustrates.
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