Watched Frank Capra's restored 1937 Lost Horizon. Great B&W flick. The utopian underpinning is ridiculous, as all utopian underpinnings are, but there's drama and originality and humor, old-style acting chops from Ronald Coleman, and such great photography, great sets.
A drekkish remake, a color musical (!), was made in the 70s by Ross Hunter, Larry Kramer (yes, her) and Burt Bacharach. Oy. In the 1930's version, they could be faithful to the book, which makes it clear, in print, that the mission was to remove the "white people" from danger during a local Chinese rebellion. The hero, without prompting, affirms this, although he later shows some abstract humanitarian regret about it. But in the remake, it is only outside pressure which forces him to provide an exit just for "Europeans", now surrounded by Indians.
I also noticed in the film that hero Conway's brother, although played by a Nordically handsome 25 year old John Howard, was really a weak, self-indulgent and histrionic teenage girl of a character. Quite operatically so. Howard's need to escape Shangri-La only affected his brother, really. But in the remake, the blurb reminds us that "his ambitious brother sees it as a prison from which he must escape, even if it means risking his life and bringing destruction to the ancient culture of Shangri-La." From narcissistic baby to culturally predatory imperialist. Welcome to the new world.
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