Frank Capra’s production of James Hilton’s popular novel Lost Horizon offers a utopian vision that is only fully comprehensible in the context of the period between the two world wars.  Hilton’s novel was the direct result of the fear and disillusionment stemming from the catastrophe of WWI.  The central character, Conway, is a British survivor of the trenches who recognizes that his beliefs and desires have been profoundly altered by his war experience.  He can find peace and hope only in an inaccessible world, utterly remote from his own.

It is difficult for later generations to understand the depth of horror and sense of tragedy felt by survivors of the first ‘great war’ of the Twentieth Century even as they contemplated the possibility of another such conflict.  Yet Hitler had come to power by 1933, the year the book was published, and by the time of the film’s release in 1937, the brutal Spanish Civil War had emerged as a prologue to the unthinkable but inevitable conflagration to come.   It is understandable then why Capra and screenwriter Riskin depict the legendary Tibetan monastery “Shangra-La” (the name itself came to popularize the utopian ideal) as a spiritual refuge from a world gone hopelessly mad.

For some, the film’s highly theatrical style might dilute its content, and its syncretic philosophy can seem banal.  Nonetheless, at a time when the Dalai Lama has become a universal symbol of spiritual resistance to our own era’s violence and lust for domination, the wisdom of the fictional, ageless “Grand Lama” of Shangra-La (played memorably by Sam Jaffe) takes on a new – or perhaps timeless –relevance.

Ron Austin, Veteran Writer and Producer, and 1998 Chair of the City of Angels Film Festival, began his career in Hollywood as a young actor under the direction of Charles Chaplin.  He is a member of the Motion Picture Academy, a founding member of Catholics in Media Associates, and has served on the Boards of the Writers Guild and the Center for Media Literacy.  Mr. Austin has also taught graduate level screenwriting courses at the USC School of Cinema