Lost Horizon

Capra adapts James Hilton's Utopian novel with grace and beauty.

It's so nice to be able to see something resembling the original vision Capra had for this story, the wonders of science gives us a cracking restoration to enjoy at our want.

Robert Conway is a British diplomat who helps a group of people (one his younger brother) escape from a Chinese revolution in a passenger plane, all doesn't go to plan, though, as the plane has been skyjacked and is heading into the Himalayas, and Tibet. The plane crash lands due to the pilot becoming stricken, and after the passengers get out they are greeted by a party of people belonging to the Valley Of The Blue Moon, to which is a beautiful and peaceful world known as Shangri-La.

Shangri-La ...

Having managed to arrange the evacuation of ninety-odd British civilians from the clutches of the marauding Chinese army, diplomat Conway (Ronald Colman) is now on a plane with his brother George (John Howard) and a few others heading for the safety of Shanghai. What they dont realise, though, is that their plane was hijacked on the airfield and is heading in completely the wrong direction. After a whistle-stop refuelling pit-stop, the plane crash-lands high in the Himalayan mountains and things look bleak with the ill-equipped party reduced to eating grass and sheltering in their broken fuselage. Then, as if by magic, they encounter some fur-clad travellers, one of whom speaks fluent English, and are safely conducted to a paradise on Earth...