Dios non sabedes o que é para min ler literatura do período de entreguerras. DIOS. É como tar na casiña cunha mantita, esa forma que tiñan os señores de filosofar sobre a existencia e o fin último do ser humano, e a felicidade e a amargura, sendo sempre tan tan tiernos. Aiai. È que pasaría o resto da miña vida lendo estes libros se por min fora.

[To fully capture my moment of reading this book and re-watching Frank Capra's 1937 film version of Lost Horizon simultaneously, I've penned a mighty review of both that exceeds the Goodreads 20,000-character limit. To get around this, I have posted the rest in my personal writing section, where it fits snugly. It can be found: here. First part of the review starts here. Continuation link is below.]

In 1937, director Frank Capra made a masterful, heart-rending movie out of James Hilton's immensely popular 1933 Utopian novel, Lost Horizon. It is one of the perennial classics of Golden Age Hollywood, and the circumstances of its making -- and ironically, its partially "lost" state through the years due to several rounds of injudicious cutting -- have become as legendary as the film's stature.

I've now read Hilton's original novel, and re-watched Capra's movie after having not see it for many years, and I have to say, unequivocally, that the Hollywood director -- working from a brilliant script adaptation by the ingenious Robert Riskin -- wins the contest hands-down; the movie is a masterpiece, while the much more austere book is merely a good tale boosted by some choice philosophical musings, almost all of which make it into the film but in expertly compressed form.

In the book, Hilton leaves much to the imagination, which is fine, but Riskin and Capra took up the challenge of filling in gaps in the tale, adding and subtracting characters, fleshing out motivations and personalities and heightening the sense of scope, adventure and romance. The ideas are still there, but where Hilton only gives us the "head," the filmmakers give us heart as well. I am not the only one out there who prefers the film to the book. Google tells me this.

Nonetheless, it is very easy to see why the book was popular in the depths of the Great Depression. The book ponders the existence of an uncharted Utopia, Shangri-La, hidden away in an inaccessible valley in the Tibetan Himalayas; a place where the pace of life is slow, where warfare and strife and intolerance and hunger and the backstabbing ways of the outside world do not exist; where there is no want and no pressure to even succeed in any conventional way; where a benign religious order of monk-like ascetics lords it over a docile population of contented villagers; and where aging itself has been slowed, doubling the lifespan of its inhabitants.

The inherent take-away from this tale is that, of course, there is nothing about Shangri-La that doesn't already exist in the "normal" world -- if only we would put down our arms and open our hearts and use our resources wisely and treat each other preciously and tolerantly. The battle going on in our world today, as it has for so long, is between idealists striving for something like the Shangri-La vision in a collective context and those dedicated to the proposition that selfishness is the only way that individuals can achieve it. So far, as we tragically know, the world has only known warped versions of both these paradigms -- and the masses have never won in them.

The idea of the benevolent dictator was a powerful one in the 1930s, especially prior to the rise of the malevolent Hitler, and can still be seen today in the unquestioning trust some people have put in Donald Trump. In Lost Horizon, that overarching presence of authority takes the form of the High Lama, a remote inaccessible figure who seems to do nothing yet somehow maintains by his mere existence the balance and equilibrium of his society. President Franklin Roosevelt, to some degree, represented the Great White Father to Americans during the Depression, and the power he assumed was granted by fiat from a Depression-weary public. His looming place in the psyche could be seen in America's movies at the time, in the folksy benign strongman president in 1933's bizarre pseudo-messianic political fantasy, Gabriel in the White House, in the Lincoln-like populist leader hero of King Vidor's 1934 film Our Daily Bread, and even in the Great and Powerful Oz in the 1939 classic film of The Wizard of Oz. Like the great Oz, the High Lama sees nobody, he is remote and inaccessible, but is somehow assumed to be good. His high perch in his lamasery is as exalted as Oz's throne in the deep bowels of the Emerald City.

I note these points for context in trying to understand the public mind at the time of the publication of Lost Horizon. Today, we have to overcome no small amount of jadedness and incredulity to suspend disbelief about the particulars of this tale. When Lost Horizon was published, King Kong had just opened in theatres, and I could not help but immediately make the connection between the two. In 1933, it was still possible for audiences to believe that there were uncharted places on the map where secret civilizations remained hidden from the modern world. Skull Island in ...Kong ...somewhere west of Java -- somewhere ... and Shangri-La, somewhere in an uncharted Tibetan mountain range untraversed by white man (of course, a place does not exist unless traversed and mapped by white man; and Asia seemed to still represent "the other" for the convenience of these tales).

Well, by now, Whitey has had his run of the map, and if Shangri-La does exist it's somewhere deep down below the ground, and might remain there unless Whitey destroys it by fracking.

Before this review goes entirely off the rails and becomes the rambling socio-political essay that it partially already has, let's explore the book and film a bit...

The hero, in both the book and film version of Lost Horizon is a suave British diplomat in early middle age named Robert Conway. In the book, Conway's story -- at least as much of it as the narrator has been able to gather from various sources -- is one as enigmatic as the man himself. The unnamed narrator of the book, a neurologist and old college acquaintance of Conway's, learns from another old Oxford pal of Conway's (a novelist named Rutherford), of the apparent fanciful exploits of Conway, which Rutherford has written into book form. Conway, it seems, has surfaced after a mysterious adventure and suffered some anmesia in the course of events, but over time regains his memory and begins to relate a fantastic tale to Rutherford about his unwitting discovery (via his own kidnapping) of Shangri-La. Before Rutherford can get more of the tale from Conway, the adventurer disappears again, leading his old pals to speculate later in the book if Conway ever managed to again find Shangri-La. At this point, I wondered if Rutherford, being a novelist, was merely an unreliable narrator, taking a tale and scribing it into his own fiction. Hilton does not answer this, and probably by the vagueness he imparts in much of the book meant the reader to ponder such speculations about the reality of Shangri-La and about the mere philosophical concept of it.

The neurologist narrator, Rutherford and another college pal, Wyland, are entirely absent in the film version. Riskin and Capra go at the tale directly, jettisoning the omniscent narrator/flashback devices of the book, apart from a lovely scene contrived for the end of the film. There is a possibility that some of these scene devices were in the original 3.5-hour cut of the film that bombed in a test screening. Whatever dragged down the narrative to engender such audience enmity we may never know; Capra claims to have thrown the first two reels of the film in a furnace and re-cut the movie for pacing. (Like many Capra stories, the likelihood of this being entirely true is doubtful. Throwing reels of flammable nitrate film into a furnace would have caused an explosion that would have killed him).

The differences between the Robert Conway of the book and film are notable ones. In the book, Conway's reputation seems to be largely that of a rakish charmer, a low-ranking member of the diplomatic corps whose lack of ambition and unfulfilled possibilities within the service of the Empire seems part of his notoriety. In the film, Conway is presented as a famed world adventurer, and well-known diplomat, whose loss in the film is seen as so grievous as to alarm the prime minister at 10 Downing Street. It leads to one of those classic scenes of Capraesque hubbub in which frenzied phone calls and telegraph transmissions pass in a skillfully edited flurry across the screen as the leaders call for action.

Troubling world events inform both book and film versions of the story. World War I is clearly an impetus for the story and for the character of Conway. Like the shell-shocked pilot, Larry Darrell, in Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, Conway defines himself and his attitude by his experience in war. Conway is part of the Lost Generation, and like the characters in Maugham and in Hemingway, he seems to be eternally searching the world for his place, his truth, his happiness, and his authentic existence. In a conversation with the High Lama, Conway describes himself pithily: "[I am] 1914-1918."

Conway seems to suggest that cheating death in war seems to trump all motivations to do the system's bidding as a way toward self identity, worth and success, The resultant attitude in Conway, the High Lama notes, marks him as not quite a cynic, not inordinately bitter, but partly disillusioned -- as well as very self aware, uncommonly so. These are poor traits for those expected to build families, companies and nations, so goes the wisdom. Conway has the temerity to think and question -- always disconcerting and sometimes debilitating activities.

The pressures of Conway's diplomatic station have afforded him admirable small and large pleasures, he notes, and even some occasional notoriety, but he remains dogged by an internal guilt: that is, his failure to achieve either greatness or authenticity. And, as I understand the internal psyche of Conway, achieving some kind of greatness does not necessarily equate to authenticity, whereas authenticity may, in fact, be his definition of greatness. This is actually a message that I like, if, in fact that is what Conway represents. As Conway says in the book, "It always seemed to me in my profession that a good deal of what passed for success would be rather disagreeable, apart from needing more effort that I felt called upon to make."

In one of the conversations between the High Lama and Conway, in fact, the very concept of the "slacker" is brought up, and the Lama seems OK with the notion. Such notions, as well as the book's sympathetic views toward pacifism and utopianism, have actually earned it criticism, not surprisingly, from Right-Wingers through the years. There actually were those who blamed this book for planting weak notions in political leaders and the elite class, resulting in the geopolitical "loss" of China and Vietnam to the communists. Seriously, I have read this.

Some of these anti-war and anti-duty sentiments are in the movie, but barely, and when the film was re-released for theatrical showing during World War II, these bits of dialogue were cut so as not to demoralize a nation gearing up to fight.

Inexorably woven into the notion of what values are most important in life, the book explores the notion of the fleetingness of life and the value of precious time. If life is not ideal, the book says, we make it less so by how much time we lose in living it inauthentically. The notion of extending time is both a literal and metaphorical concept in the book. If Shangri-La existed in the world at large, the notion of slowing aging would seem less necessary, since people would have more time to pursue their passions unimpeded by the imperatives and pressures of the system.

This quote, possibly the best one in the book, is spoken by the High Lama in conversation with Conway: "You are still, I should say, a youngish man by the world's standards; your life, as people say, lies ahead of you; in the normal course you might expect twenty or thirty years of only slightly diminishing activity. By no means a cheerless prospect, and I can hardly expect you to see it as I do--as a slender, breathless, and far too frantic interlude.The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime!”

That is followed by this: "And most precious of all--you will have Time--that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it."

These passages in which Conway and the High Lama converse on philosophical issues are the highlights of the book, and, it seems that Hilton has constructed a somewhat austere and uneventful tale around them just to get to them. The movie captures the essence of these conversations, repeating some of them verbatim or in beautifully compressed form as scribed by screenwriter Riskin. The film also fleshes out and humanizes Shangri-La in ways that Hilton seemed reluctant to do. There are arguments to made for the more or less literal approaches.

n  A bit about the movie, and changes from the bookn


Jane Wyatt (as Sondra) gives Ronald Colman (as Conway) the look we men like to see in our woman's face at that key moment of rapture. Both are worked up and sweaty after having ridden horses in a romantic chase. They have just kissed, and are about to kiss again. They are in Shangri-La, but this is the Shangri-La in microcosm that we cherish no matter where it is. None of this is in Hilton's novel; it is entirely contrived by Riskin and Capra for the film.

James Hilton was on a roll in Hollywood during this period. At least two of this other books of the time, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Random Harvest, were also made into splendid classic films.

Lost Horizon was in some sense an odd choice as a property for Columbia Studios at the time. Only a few short years before, the studio was considered just a cheapjack Poverty Row Hollywood laughingstock. Its head, Harry Cohn, was the biggest tightwad in the business, and until his ace in the hole, Frank Capra, started winning the studio a shit-ton of Academy Awards in the mid-'30s, its films were forgettable low-budget programmers.

Lost Horizon was to become Columbia Studios' first super-production. Capra loved the novel and thought its utopian populism fit perfectly with the themes of his previous movies, in which the everyman triumphs over the unjust system. Having won so much prestige for the studio, Cohn assented to Capra's demand to make the film and offered the director a $1.5 million budget, an amount that must have pained the mogul. Still, Capra knew that wasn't going to be enough. The budget was upped to $2 million. After all was said and done, it ballooned to nearly $3 million. And these were in Depression-era dollars. One buck was a lot of money then.

At a studio like MGM, $3 million was an easily digestible expense. That studio could toss off a half dozen expensive prestige epics a year, and did -- and made money at it. For Columbia, though, this was an astronomical sum, and meant a real risk.

The film's first preview threw the studio into a quiet panic. It was a disaster. The audience laughed at scenes that were not meant to be funny. Capra was so spooked, he left the theater while the movie was still in progress and walked the streets and hung out at a coffee shop.

Harry Cohn, allegedly, reassured Capra, who responded by cutting at least 20 minutes from the film, supposedly destroying the first two reels. As the movie stands now, it begins with the action-packed evacuation of Anglos from revolution-racked Baskul in China, a scene that also occurs early in the book.

Lost Horizon was a popular release but it took the studio five years to recoup its cost. It soon became a classic but various cuts through the years shaved it down to a shadow of its former self. At one point, the movie was a slender 92 minutes long compared to its original pre-release cut length of 210 minutes. After much effort, the movie was restored in the 1970s to a 132-minute length that got close to its first theatrical length. Only seven minutes are missing. The current releases supplement the lost passages with still photos from the production and -- miraculously -- the original soundtrack elements which all completely survived.

The expenditures on Lost Horizon can be seen on the screen. It's all there and it's beautiful: the sweeping mountain vistas, the large sets of the lamasery and the village, the airplane wreckage scenes that were filmed in a large refrigerated warehouse in L.A. at great cost, partly because Capra wanted the realism of seeing the actors' breath in the cold (a bit of visual veritas often overlooked in most movies of the period).

While Capra reaped much of the glory for the film, it was his eight-film collaborator, the screenwriter Robert Riskin (an Oscar winner and Writer's Guild lifetime achievement inductee) who deftly turned Hilton's book into a superb movie narrative.

Two performances in the film stand out. Ronald Colman was born to play Robert Conway. There is no possible better bit of casting. H.B. Warner as Chang the guide of Shangri-La might seem to be another unfortunate instance of a white guy playing an Asian part, but his physical "Asianess" is not emphasized and he plays the role with fetching gentility and authority. It's a lovely performance that earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Academy, and rightly so.

The most significant changes that occur from the novel to the screen version involve the characters. I suspect it was these changes, and the resulting new plot tangents and relationships they entail, that most irritated Hilton. Based on what I've read, the author was bemused and resigned to the changes, understanding Hollywood's needs to entertain, but the air of condescension is detectable in his response. I wonder if, to some degree, there was a bit of jealousy in his true feelings. This is entirely speculation on my part.

What Hilton sought in his tale was something that imparted the feeling of a fragile vase, a whiff of lilacs, or -- in the case of the one "desired" woman in his tale -- the beauty of undebauched womanhood. He wanted a book of ideas that would not succumb to the conventional passions, because Shangri-La to some degree smacks of a religious ideal, a hybrid between Jesuit Catholicism and Zen Buddhism, where an ideal state of mind can be achieved through restraint.


Conway meets the High Lama

Riskin and Capra decided that those things were OK within context, but would not make for a very dramatically interesting movie. Based on their results, I think they were correct.

In the book, Conway and a very small crew find themselves kidnapped and whisked away by plane to a mysterious mountainous destination. Once there, the main conflict involves those who decide to stay in paradise and those who want to risk the perils of escape. Over time, as the advantages of Shangri-La begin to convert even the most reluctant members of the party, the central conflict shifts to Conway and his aid, Mallinson, who opposes what he sees as nothing but indolent decadence in the Shangri-La way of life.
[Review continues in complete form: n  heren.


(kr@Ky '16)

If you don't believe in Shangri-La, well you might after reading James Hilton's Lost Horizon. Four people on a plane, hijacked and taken to a remote and secret location in the Himalayan mountains where they find a visual and spiritual paradise. A short fantasy, action, adventure. I use the word action loosely.

Hilton's beautiful tale is hard to classify. It reminds me, in a way, of "The Twenty-One Balloons," by William Pène du Bois, and in another, curious way, of C.S. Lewis's "Till We Have Faces." I do know that I want to go back to Shangri-La.

Sencillamente perfecta. Es una novela que te atrapa desde las primeras páginas. Y lo que empieza siendo aparentemente el secuestro de un loco piloto acaba convirtiéndose en todo un viaje. ¿Quién no ha oído hablar de Shangri-La? Poder descubrir esta maravillosa obra de James Hilton ha sido un lujazo increíble.

100% recomendada

Skyjacked! Unheard of in the early 1930's, yet it did happen to four passengers in Afghanistan, during a civil conflict there sounds sadly familiar. A "mad" Asian pilot with a gun does, flying east into the tallest mountains in the world. The aircraft goes above, around and hopefully not through them, a spectacular view for those with the guts to look, beautiful the Himalayas and frightening too. Tibet an almost unknown country with few visitors who return back home to report their findings, the apparent destination. "Glory" Hugh Conway a British consul, in some half- forgotten and remote city in Asia (suffering shell shock, from W.W.1). His vice -consul young hot- tempered Charles Mallinson, rather impetuous or just a coward. A missionary Roberta Brinklow a little past her prime the unkind would say.. . And the only non -British one on board the plane American Henry Barnard, mysterious, jovial a typical citizen of that country hiding something? Landing at an isolated mountainous spot not really a runway, getting refueled by people with lots of guns, the passengers are encouraged to stay in the plane, and obey , with few arguments, heroes none here. Again in the air, hour after hour always heading higher and higher into the mountains. The fuel is getting very low and must land soon, they do crashing in a valley. Where? Nobody knows since the pilot soon expires ...No food or appropriate clothes for this harsh, frigid climate, no way to get back to civilization. All see their deaths here, though next morning a miracle occurs, people are coming in their direction. An old Chinese man, Chang with a dozen others leads them to mythical Shangri-La. However first a little mountain climbing, up dizzy heights which scare his friends never Conway, a former mountain climber in the lofty Alps. Ropes are used stomachs lost, but at long last they enter the Valley of the Blue Moon (as the natives accurately call it). The impressive Karakal Mountain (Blue Moon), at 28,000 feet in elevation... Looking terrifying to the tiny newcomers... An uniquely contented.. peaceful ..enchanting...breathtaking paradise. A long ways from the constant wars and upheavals of the unstable world, sanctuary for those that need it. An imposing, prosperous Buddhist monastery ( is it still?) overlooking and dominating the valley, a majestic view ... below, a few thousand happy inhabitants . The other monks, seldom are seen there, Chang gives them food, rooms, books to read and even music to listen to in the Lamasery . Played by Lo-Tsen a talented Manchu girl, a teenager (she seems). The High Lama strangely is European and looks like he's 100- years -old, he's older ...And doesn't give much information to the curious Mr. Conway ... Many secrets are kept from the newcomers, questions are asked when can they leave? Much longer to stay for the foreigners? What's the purpose of the valley? How do they make money? And some of them begin to like the unearthly situation here ( others decidedly...the opposite). This Shangri- La, is not a bad place to live in ... A fantasy from the '30's, which has appeal even today, maybe not so strange.

During British colonial days,four
westerners are on their way to Peshawar in an aircraft when their pilot takes them to the mountains of Tibet,where the aircraft crashes.They are rescued and taken to a lamasery.

It does have some beautiful writing,when describing the mountain scenery. For a while,I remained fairly interested to know why the four people were brought to Shangri La,and were being held there,against their will.

But when the mystery was revealed,it felt like an anti-climax. It also took away the rather favourable impression of the book I had till then.

As a fantasy,it didn't appeal to me,nor as a vision of utopia. The book describes the horrors of one war (World War I) and the possibility of a second,which was yet to begin,at the time.

A mixed bag,which began well,but left me disappointed with the ending.

3.5 maybe, some of the attitudes are rather dated, and the dialogue between the four characters comes across as rather stilted, despite being a lot more interesting when Conway speaks to the monks. I like the open ending, and the whole concept of Shangri-La is an interesting one to think about.

Read it in two days. Enjoyable book with more discussion than action.
Most of the first third of the book happens on the airplane, where the four passengers keep discussing hypotheses for what is happening to them. The second third is getting to know Shangri-La and its mysteries, little by little as they gather information from Chang. In the last one, through a series of conversations with the High Lama which involve history and philosophy, we learn about the founding of the monastery and some of its mysteries.

Conway's character is a perfect match for Ronald Colman. Edward Everett Horton's character does not appear in the book. The swindler played by Thomas Mitchell appears in the book, where he's a finance shark, which is not the kind of swindler I associate Mitchell with. The unhappy passenger in the book is not a relation of Conway's. Possibly, he was made into his brother for the movie to give a stronger motivation to Conway's decision to leave with him. The horrific ending in the movie is not in the book, there is only a hint about it.

This is a reread. I can't even tell you how many times. If not my favorite book, it is certainly in the top five. This book was the first James Hilton I read. An incredible author. I discovered it when I stayed at a lovely suite, in the Shangri-La Hotel, Hong Kong. They had a wonderful library, actually many wonderful things, however, a lovely copy of Lost Horizon was in my room as part of the many amenities. I called down, told them I loved the book and wanted them to add it to my bill. The reply, was please take it as our gift. Over the years, I have bought multiple copies of this book, for my home library. Everyone should make themselves familiar with Hilton's works.

As a side remark: The Shangri-La Hotel is well named. I don't think I ever stayed at any other hotel in the world (and I've stayed at many), which had such a level of exceptional service. Reaching the point where they anticipated your desires and needs before you asked.

مقريتش الرواية الاصلية
بس اعتقد ان د احمد ملخص منها كتير اوي زيادة عن الحد

بس رغم كده الفصول الاخيرة في الكتاب ممتعة
خصوصا مقابلة البطل لللاما
النهاية شبه مبتورة
اعتقد ان تفاصيل النهايات دوما بتحيي الرواية
حتى لو كان الحجم هيزيد شوية
بس انا بستمتع في طريقته في الانتقاء و الترجمة و الاختزال اكتر بكتير من الروايات المترجمة نفسها
ادامه الله

محمد عطية
فبراير 2013

Estamos ante una historia de aventuras perfecta. Una recopilación de drama, tensión y misterio al que James Hilton embelesa al lector de manera magistral.

Los personajes son insuperables, cada uno de ellos tratan sus emociones con un talante distinto ante un escenario utópico y una trama que te aferra desde sus primeras páginas.
El protagonista de la obra es ejemplar, casi me atrevo a decir que es heroico en sus actos y modélico tomando las riendas de las tesituras en que se encuentra.

“Horizontes perdidos” replantea si debemos aceptar las oportunidades que la vida presenta en determinadas ocasiones.

¿Qué os parece? ¿Te llama una historia así?

“En medio de la dificultad reside la oportunidad”
Albert Einstein.