Lost Horizon (1937 film)

Lost Horizon, re-released in 1942 simply as *Lost Horizon* (no subtitle), is a 1937 American adventure drama fantasy film directed by Frank Capra. Robert Riskin wrote the screenplay, adapting it from James Hilton’s 1933 novel of the same name. The production went more than $776,000 over its original budget and took five years to turn a profit. This severe financial strain at Columbia Pictures strained both Capra’s partnership with studio head Harry Cohn and his friendship with Riskin. In 2016, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, citing its cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance.

The story begins in 1931, when a revolutionary uprising in the fictional Chinese city of Baskul forces Westerners to flee to the airport. Robert Conway, a British diplomat and former soldier, organizes the evacuation before he is set to return to the United Kingdom and become Foreign Secretary. He departs with the last four evacuees: paleontologist Alexander Lovett, swindler Henry Barnard, terminally ill Gloria Stone, and his younger brother George. Their pilot is forcibly replaced, and the aircraft is hijacked. It eventually runs out of fuel and crashes deep in the Himalayas of Tibet, killing the abductor.

Chang and his men rescue the group and bring them to Shangri-La, a sheltered, idyllic valley protected from the bitter cold. The mysterious High Lama leads the contented inhabitants. Though initially eager to return home, most newcomers grow to love the valley, including Gloria, who appears to recover from her illness. Conway is especially captivated, particularly after meeting Sondra, a French teacher who grew up there. However, George and a young woman named Maria are determined to leave.

Conway eventually meets the High Lama, who reveals himself as Father Perrault, a European Catholic priest who arrived in the area many years earlier. The founder of Shangri-La is said to be two hundred years old, preserved by the valley’s magical properties, but he is dying and needs a successor wise in modern ways. Having read Conway’s writings, Sondra believed he was the one; the Lama agreed and arranged for Conway’s abduction. The old man names Conway his successor and then dies peacefully.

George refuses to believe the Lama’s story, especially that Maria is much older than the twenty years she claims. Ch