Lost Horizon: the Movie Behind the Myth

Spectacle, excitement, romance… Stirring, fantastic… Thrilling and compassionate… A grand adventure…A drama of heart's desire come true."

Such were the plaudits of the critics at the movie opening of the U$2 million extravaganza of Lost Horizon in New York in 1937. Heralded by three years of record-breaking book sales, Lost Horizon was an instant and enduring success at the box office as well. What would make James Hilton's "brooding masterpiece" such a sensation in the Western world in the 1930s? What was it about the land of Tibet cum Shangri-La that has continued to so capture the imagination of the West?

Hilton's hero, Conway, is kidnapped on a flight from revolution-torn Baskul across bleak mountains to beyond the edges of the Frontier. On contemplating the reason for the flight, Conway muses whether it's "the will of God or the lunacy of man — it seemed to him you could take your choice…Or alternatively, the will of man and the lunacy of God…" Then Conway is transported to the lamasery at Shangri-La where the High Lama has built a sanctuary for civilization, preserving "the frail elegances of a dying age and seeking such wisdom as men will need when their passions are spent."

Conway was a veteran of World War I, as were, figuratively, Hilton and Hollywood in the 1930s. Still war-weary, they were among those whose perspective led them to fear that the world again was being pulled into war. The escapist dream of Lost Horizon filled a barely subconscious need. Tibet, among the last lands unveiled to the West, became, in Shangri-La, the projected dream home of millions. In Tibet, among the mountains of the Himalaya whose scale and grandeur exceeded even Western superlatives, here the American hoped the best of man lay protected.

In Shangri-La, there was no fearful "ism," no modern nation-state, no economic-political organization of empire or kingdom, but that best of all governments: the benevolent dictatorship, infused with moderation, virtue and sweet serenity (and, incidentally, Western classical music and plumbing). Here was still, to quote Joseph Campbell, "an isolated society, dream-bounded within a mythically-charged horizon."

In Shangri-La, an individual lived long enough to outlive his greed and lust and destructive tendencies. In the aftermath of the War to End All Wars, Hilton and Hollywood feared that man might not be so fortunate. From the current perspective of an age of nuclear proliferation and continuing ethnic and political strife worldwide, perhaps their fears were well-founded.

Interestingly enough, however, Hilton leaves us with the paradox of our hero Conway, having escaped from the escapist dream, struggling to return to the lost horizon of Shangri-La. Ever-clever, Hollywood filmed two endings and when the one of Conway successfully returning was deemed too happy, cut the more ambiguous one of Conway still struggling. That this would be the "real" ending to the fantasy of Shangri-La, more satisfactory to the subconscious, attests to the internal nature of the struggle, wherein the mind of man must wage the fight between greed and desire, and the freedom to choose a different order. Shangri- La is not to be found in Tibet, but in the heart of man.