Lost Horizon

Frank Capra's classic romantic fantasy leaves the standard "Capraesque" middle-class milieu of most of his most beloved masterpieces for a vividly realized world of strange adventure and fantasy. Faithfully adapted from James Hilton's popular novel, the film opens as Robert Conway (Colman), a gallant but world-weary British diplomat, author and Far Eastern historian, comes to the aid of some refugees from a Chinese revolution. The group takes off in a small passenger plane, the motley collection including Conway's younger, impressionable brother (Howard); a swindler on the lam (Mitchell); a tubercular prostitute (Jewell); and a fussy, fossil-hunting scientist (Hort...