Share the Joy: In Defense of Lost Horizon

New Line Theatre will have a 2021-22 season! I will get my life back! Woohoo!

But we don't go back into rehearsal till August. So for now, I'm still solely a writer, and I have three projects I'm working on. One is a new book of musical theatre analysis, Hamilton and the New Revolution; the second is a new book of history and analysis of movie musicals, Play / Back; and the third is a sequel to the much beloved Shelly Shelby Shares the Spotlight.

As I work on my movie musical book, I keep encountering movies I've heard of but never seen, and some I've never even heard of. And also, a few that have always been considered shitty, but I love them.

Case in point: The 1973 musical fantasy drama Lost Horizon has been dismissed and ridiculed for decades as a gigantic and ridiculous debacle. But it’s not true.

It’s a fascinating film that may have been six years too late or a couple decades too early, but there’s so much about it that’s interesting and so much that’s right. Maybe had it opened during the Summer of Love, the reception would have been far better. Maybe if Cabaret hadn’t just changed the movie musical forever, Lost Horizon might have been accepted on its own terms.

Here's the 1973 trailer for the film. Beware the 137 minute version on Amazon Prime -- it cuts two songs and a huge dance number! The DVD and Blu-Ray have the full 149 minute version.

The film opens almost in documentary style, as a political thriller, as Americans and other Westerners evacuate Baskul, a fictional stand-in for Kabul, Afghanistan, the government of which has clearly fallen. The last five people to go, get on board an old, shaky plane, and before takeoff, their plane is hijacked and the pilot killed. The plane crashes in the Himalayas, and soon they are rescued by the inhabitants of a hidden place naturally sheltered by mountains from the harsh weather. Soon we find out this is Shangri-La (“Valley of the Blue Moon"), a beautiful, Edenic place, with amazing architecture and lush greenery everywhere -- hidden away in the middle of the Himalayas.

From this point on, the movie becomes a very different story, a lesson (for the characters and for us) in a more countercultural, more Eastern philosophy of living.

The conflict at the center of the story is that some of the five central characters didn’t like their other lives and are delighted to be here; while the others very much want to get back to the “real world.” Conway is the only passenger who immediately realizes that this is a place of learning, and that he belongs here in some way. When he first sees Shangri-La, Conway says to Chang, “It’s like coming home.” The whole story is about what scholar Joseph Campbell would call Following Your Bliss, finding the right path for you and staying on it.

Particularly in 1973, this was a radical idea. The Sixties were over. The counterculture had mostly lost. And Lost Horizon was a response to that zeitgeist. It was an utterly earnest and sincere movie in an age of dark irony and cynicism, so it was called silly, shallow, stupid, inane, vapid, and lots of other names. It’s not any of those things, but critics and audiences judged the movie for not being what they thought it ought to be, instead of judging it for what it is meant to be.

In 1933, British author James Hilton wrote the novel Lost Horizon, and after a slow start, it became a bestseller, selling millions of copies over the years, introducing the world to Shangri-La. In 1937, Frank Capra made a movie version, now widely considered a classic. But despite a strong performance from Ronald Colman as Conway, it’s hard to watch today, with its inappropriately art deco architecture, mannered acting, awkwardly slangy dialogue, cringey gay jokes, really bad old-age makeup, and uncomfortable cultural condescension. In 1956, there was an ill-fated Broadway musical called Shangri La, with book and lyrics by James Hilton, Jerome Lawrence, and Robert E. Lee, and music by Harry Warren. It closed after twenty-one performances.

The 1973 musical film remake of Lost Horizon was based both on the novel and the earlier film. The all-star casting was impressive, with Peter Finch as Richard Conway, a diplomat; Sally Kellerman as Sally Hughes, a Newsweek photographer; George Kennedy as Sam Cornelius, a failed businessman; Michael York as George Conway, a London reporter; Bobby Van as Harry Lovett, a failed comedian. And as inhabitants of Shangri-La, Liv Ullmann as Catherine, the schoolteacher; Olivia Hussey as Maria, the dancer; James Shigeta as Brother To-Lenn, a young priest; John Gielgud as Chang, an older priest; and Charles Boyer as the High Lama. Unfortunately for today’s audience, Gielgud plays Chang in Asian “yellowface” makeup with prosthetic eyelids; it's fairly subtle but you can't miss it. On the other hand, the High Lama is revealed to be originally from Europe, so that casting makes sense.

The structure of Lost Horizon is telling. We start in the real world, immersed in violence and politics, and through acts of political violence, our five protagonists end up in a fantasy world. The filmmakers have taken us methodically through the process of getting there, taking us from a familiar world to a new and unfamiliar world.

There wasn’t all that much genuinely radical about Lost Horizon, other than the courage of its idealistic convictions, but apparently that was the issue. Most mainstream musicals had always reinforced the dominant social values of their audiences. This was a musical that pointedly rejected the dominant social values of 1973 America. When Conway’s brother George says to their host, “We all wish to return to civilization as soon as possible,” Chang replies, “Are you so certain you are away from it?”

The creators of this story, the novelist James Hilton, and the 1973 screenwriter Larry Kramer, were saying something of value in this film. Even if people thought the hippies went too far, or didn’t go far enough, or simply failed to change anything, the teachers of Shangri-La were warning us not to reject everything we learned in the Sixties – community, brotherhood, compassion, enlightenment, connection. The High Lama tells Conway they have only one rule in Shangri-La: Be Kind.

Each of the main characters is introduced to us at a moment of maximum stress, a time when everyone’s true character emerges. We see how the five deal with fear, crisis, adversity, possible death. These characters are partially revealed to us long before they reach Shangri-La.

And they are further revealed as each one of them follows the classic Hero’s Journey, though in this story, their journeys are interior ones. That’s why they’re here. There is the call to adventure, which they initially resist but ultimately accept, they navigate various obstacles which reveal their true selves and teach them lessons, and finally, each must face themselves and gain new wisdom.

Chang says to Conway, “Like everyone else, you are on a pilgrimage through life. By chance, part of your voyage of discovery is here.” One by one, four of the protagonists learn to give of themselves, to share themselves – but not George, who remains the unconverted cynic and wants only to get home. The other four are each healed ultimately by connecting.

Shangri-La works as a powerful metaphor for human enlightenment. It’s been there all the time, but hidden. It’s hard to find and the path leading to it is rough and treacherous. To be sure, Lost Horizon doesn’t supply us with any concrete answers, only questions.

The title refers to the nautical term “host horizon,” which means so far out at sea that you can’t see land, so you can’t tell by sight which direction is which. As an existential metaphor, that certainly describes the five travelers in the story, and perhaps human civilization in general, in the 1930s, in the 1970s, and now.

I highly recommend the novel and the 1973 film. They're both really wonderful.

Long Live the (Movie) Musical!
Scott