| Lost Horizon | |
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Original poster |
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| Directed by | Frank Capra |
| Produced by | Frank Capra |
| Screenplay by | Robert Riskin |
| Based on | Lost Horizon by James Hilton |
| Starring | Ronald Colman Jane Wyatt John Howard |
| Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| Cinematography | Joseph Walker Elmer Dyer |
| Editing by | Gene Havlick Gene Milford |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 2, 1937 |
| Running time | 132 minutes 210 minutes (original cut) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2 million |
Lost Horizon is a 1937 American drama-fantasy film directed by Frank Capra. The screenplay by Robert Riskin is based on the 1933 novel of the same title by James Hilton.
The film exceeded its original budget by more than $776,000, and it took five years for it to earn back its cost. The serious financial crisis it created for Columbia Pictures damaged the partnership between Capra and studio head Harry Cohn, as well as the friendship between Capra and screenwriter Riskin, whose previous collaborations had included Lady for a Day, It Happened One Night, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.[1]
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Before returning to England to become the new Foreign Secretary, writer, soldier and diplomat Robert Conway has one last task in 1935 China: to rescue 90 Westerners in the city of Baskul. He flies out with the last few evacuees, just ahead of armed revolutionaries.
Unbeknownst to the passengers, the pilot has been replaced and their aircraft hijacked. It eventually runs out of fuel and crashes deep in the Himalayan Mountains, killing their abductor. The group is rescued by Chang and his men and taken to Shangri-La, an idyllic valley sheltered from the bitter cold. The contented inhabitants are led by the mysterious High Lama.
Initially anxious to return to civilization, most of the newcomers grow to love Shangri-La, including paleontologist Alexander Lovett, swindler Henry Barnard and bitter, terminally ill Gloria Stone, who miraculously seems to be recovering. Conway is particularly enchanted, especially when he meets Sondra, who has grown up in Shangri-La. However, Conway's younger brother George, and Maria, another beautiful young woman they find there, are determined to leave.
Conway eventually has an audience with the High Lama and learns that his arrival was no accident. The founder of Shangri-La is said 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 ways of the modern world to keep it safe. Having read Conway's writings, Sondra believed he was the one; the Lama had agreed with her and arranged for Conway's abduction. The old man names Conway as his successor and then peacefully passes away.
George refuses to believe the Lama's fantastic story and is supported by Maria. Uncertain and torn between love and loyalty, Conway reluctantly gives in to his brother and they leave, taking Maria with them, despite being warned that she is much older than she appears. After several days of grueling travel, she becomes exhausted and falls face down in the snow. When they turn her over, they discover that she had become extremely old and died. 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, although the ordeal has caused him to lose his memory of Shangri-La. On the voyage back to England, he remembers everything; he tells his story and then jumps ship. The searchers track him back to the Himalayas, but are unable to follow him any further. Conway manages to return to Shangri-La.
Hilton's Conway is not as successful as the character in the film version. Rather than the next Foreign Secretary, he is an anonymous, mid-level British consul. Thus, he is not the specific target of the kidnapping, which is merely intended to bring in a few outsiders. However, the High Lama perceives Conway's remarkable affinity for the spirit and goals of Shangri-La and does pass on the mantle of leadership to him before dying. In the book, unlike the film, not everyone in Shangri-La is granted the gift of long life. The delicately beautiful Manchu princess Lo-Tsen is the basis of the Maria character. There is no Sondra in the novel, though Conway does feel a languid attraction to Lo-Tsen. Mallinson, Conway's younger, discontented vice-consul rather than his brother, persuades Conway to leave with him and Lo-Tsen. Mallinson's fate is not revealed, and it is implied that Lo-Tsen brings a sick Conway to a hospital before dying of old age. There, he is found, not as a result of a massive search, but simply by chance by an acquaintance.
Frank Capra had read the James Hilton novel while filming It Happened One Night, and he intended to make Lost Horizon his next project. When Ronald Colman, his first and only choice for the role of Robert Conway, proved to be unavailable, Capra decided to wait and made Mr. Deeds Goes to Town instead.[2]
Harry Cohn authorized a budget of $1.25 million for the film, the largest amount ever allocated to a project up to that time.[3] According to a 1986 Variety interview with Frank Capra, Jr., his father had wanted to shoot the film in color, but because the only suitable stock footage, such as scenes from a documentary about the Himalayas, he intended to incorporate into the film was in black and white, he was forced to change his plans.[4] In 1985, Capra, Sr. claimed the decision to film in black and white was made because three-strip color was new and fairly expensive, and the studio was unwilling to increase the film's budget so he could utilize it.[5]
From the beginning, Capra ran into difficulties that resulted in serious cost overruns. Principal photography began on March 23, 1936, and by the time it was completed on July 17, the director had spent $1.6 million.[6] Contributing to the added expenses was the filming of snow scenes and aircraft interiors at the Los Angeles Ice and Cold Storage Warehouse, where the low temperature affected the equipment and caused lengthy delays. The Streamline Moderne sets representing Shangri-La, designed by Stephen Goosson, had been constructed adjacent to Hollywood Way, a busy thoroughfare by day, which necessitated filming at night and heavily added to overtime expenses. Many exteriors were filmed on location in Palm Springs, Lucerne Valley, the Ojai Valley, the Mojave Desert, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and in what is now Westlake Village, adding the cost of transporting cast, crew, and equipment to the swelling budget.[7]
Capra also used multiple cameras to cover every scene from several angles, and by the time shooting ended, he had used 1.1 million feet of film. For one scene lasting four minutes, he shot 6,000 feet, the equivalent of one hour of screen time. He spent six days filming Sam Jaffe performing the High Lama's monologues, then reshot the scenes twice, once with Walter Connolly because it was felt Jaffe's makeup was unconvincing and he looked too young for the role. A total of 40 minutes of footage featuring the High Lama eventually was trimmed to the 12 that appeared in the final cut. Filming took one hundred days, 34 more than scheduled. The film's final cost, including prints and promotional advertising, was $2,626,620, and it remained in the red until it was reissued in 1942.[7]
The first cut of the film was six hours long. The studio considered releasing it in two parts, but eventually decided the idea was impractical. Working with editors Gene Havlick and Gene Milford, Capra managed to trim the running time to 3½ hours for the first preview in Santa Barbara on November 22, 1936. Following a showing of the screwball comedy Theodora Goes Wild, the audience was not receptive to a drama of epic length. Many walked out, and those who remained laughed at sequences intended to be serious. The feedback was mostly negative, and Capra was so distraught he fled to Lake Arrowhead, and remained in seclusion there for several days. He later claimed he burned the first two reels of the film, an account disputed by Milford, who noted setting the nitrate film on fire would have created a devastating explosion.[8]
Following the disastrous preview, Capra made extensive cuts and, on January 12, 1937, reshot scenes involving the High Lama written by Sidney Buchman, who declined screen credit for his work, which placed more emphasis on the growing desperation of the world situation at the time. Still unhappy with the film's length, Harry Cohn intervened; he cancelled the February 1 opening and edited the film himself. When it premiered in San Francisco on March 2, it was 132 minutes long. During the film's initial release in selected cities, it was a roadshow attraction, with only two presentations per day and tickets sold on a reserved-seat basis. Because the box office returns were so low, the studio head deleted an additional 14 minutes before the film went into general release the following September. Due primarily to the cuts made without his approval, Capra later filed a lawsuit against Columbia, citing "contractural disagreements," among them the studio's refusal to pay him a $100,000 semi-annual salary payment due him. A settlement was reached on November 27, 1937, with Capra collecting his money and being relieved of the obligation of making one of the five films required by his contract. In 1985, the director claimed Cohn, whom he described as the "Jewish producer," trimmed the film simply so theaters could have more daily showings and increase the film's chance of turning a profit.[9]
Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times called it, "a grand adventure film, magnificently staged, beautifully photographed, and capitally played." He continued,
[T]here is no denying the opulence of the production, the impressiveness of the sets, the richness of the costuming, the satisfying attention to large and small detail which makes Hollywood at its best such a generous entertainer. We can deride the screen in its lesser moods, but when the West Coast impresarios decide to shoot the works the resulting pyrotechnics bathe us in a warm and cheerful glow." In conclusion, he observed, "The penultimate scenes are as vivid, swift, and brilliantly achieved as the first. Only the conclusion itself is somehow disappointing. But perhaps that is inescapable, for there can be no truly satisfying end to any fantasy... Mr. Capra was guilty of a few directorial clichés, but otherwise it was a perfect job. Unquestionably the picture has the best photography and sets of the year. By all means it is worth seeing. [10]
He later named it one of the 10 best films of the year.[11]
The Hollywood Reporter called it "an artistic tour de force... in all ways, a triumph for Frank Capra."[3]
Less enthusiastic was Otis Ferguson, who in his review for National Board of Review Magazine observed, "This film was made with obvious care and expense, but it will be notable in the future only as the first wrong step in a career that till now has been a denial of the very tendencies in pictures which this film represents."[3]Joseph McBride in a later biography notes that Capra's emphasis on theme rather than people was evident in the film; he also considered the film a financial "debacle." [7]
Stephen Goosson's elaborate sets won him the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, and Gene Havlick and Gene Milford shared the Academy Award for Best Film Editing.[12]
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture but lost to The Life of Emile Zola, and H.B. Warner lost the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor to Joseph Schildkraut for the same film. Although Dimitri Tiomkin composed the music, the nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Score went to Morris Stoloff, the head of the music department at Columbia Pictures. The Oscar went to Charles Previn of Universal Pictures for One Hundred Men and a Girl. John P. Livadary was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound but lost to Thomas Moulton for The Hurricane. Charles C. Coleman, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Assistant Director, lost to Robert Webb for In Old Chicago. This was the last year an Oscar was awarded in this category.[13]
In 1942, the film was re-released as The Lost Horizon of Shangri-La. A lengthy drunken speech delivered by Robert Conway, in which he cynically mocked war and diplomacy, was deleted because it was feared such sentiments expressed at the height of World War II would prove to be unpopular with audiences. Capra felt the film made no sense without the scene,[3] and in later years film critic Leslie Halliwell described the missing 12 minutes as "vital."[18]
In 1952, a 92-minute version of the film was released. It aimed to downplay the supposedly Communist themes associated with utopia, as well as to limit the sympathy shown towards the Chinese, whose relationship with the American government grew strained in the years following World War II.
In 1973, the American Film Institute initiated a restoration of the film. The project was undertaken by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Columbia Pictures and took 13 years to complete. Although all 132 minutes of the original soundtrack were recovered, only 125 minutes of film could be found, so the seven minutes of missing film footage were replaced with a combination of publicity photos of the actors in costume taken during filming and still frames depicting the missing scenes.[8]
Lost Horizon was adapted as a radio play starring Ronald Colman and Donald Crisp for the September 15, 1941 broadcast of Lux Radio Theater. Colman reprised his role again for the July 24, 1946 broadcast of Favorite Story and the November 27, 1946 broadcast of Academy Award Theater.
That same year, Ronald Colman also made a three-record, 78 RPM album based on the film for American Decca Records. The score for the album was by Victor Young.[19]
Another radio adaptation starring Herbert Marshall was broadcast on December 30, 1948 on Hallmark Playhouse.
A stage musical called Shangri-La was produced on Broadway in 1956, but closed after only 21 performances.[20] It was staged for a 1960 Hallmark Hall of Fame television broadcast.
Lost Horizon, a 1973 musical film remake was a critical and commercial failure.
Columbia Tristar Home Video released the restored version of the film on Region 1 DVD on August 31, 1999. It has an English audio track and subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Georgian, Chinese and Thai. Bonus features include three deleted scenes, an alternate ending, commentary about the restoration by Charles Champlin and Robert Gitt, and a photo documentary with narration by film historian Kendall Miller.
A Region 2 DVD including the same bonus features plus the original theatrical trailer was released on February 26, 2001. It has audio tracks in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish and subtitles in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Portuguese, Turkish, Danish, Icelandic, Bulgarian, Swedish, Hungarian, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Finnish, Czech and Greek.
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