Lost Horizon (1937)

In 1935 China, a renowned British diplomat (Ronald Colman) is helping rescue westerners from approaching armed revolutionaries. He and a handful of passengers barely make it on the last plane out. But he soon finds that they are being kidnapped and headed for an unknown destination. Based on the novel by James Hilton and directed by Frank Capra (IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT). I've never understood the affection for this loopy fantasy. The first half hour or so is well done but once they get to Shangri La, it turns into a naive reverie of an impossible dream. A la-la land where everyone lives in peace and harmony and never gets sick and lives to be 200 years old! Where progress doesn't exist and people still go to wells to get their water. It comes across as a creepy cult, Jonestown in Guyana situated in the mountains of the Himalayas, only here they don't drink the Kool-Aid ..... yet. I much prefer the maligned 1973 musical remake. If I'm going to swallow this concoction, I want singing and dancing and Burt Bacharach! Is there anything good about Capra's film? The Stephen Goosson art direction is fantastic and Dimitri Tiomkin proves a terrific underscore. With Jane Wyatt, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton, Sam Jaffe, H.B. Warner, Margo, Isabel Jewell and John Howard.