Lost Horizon

REVIEW
The restoration of Capra's exotic fantasy about the fabled kingdom of Shangri-La is in itself an epic of sorts: a 13-year search of worldwide archives to locate some 20 minutes of lost footage, cut following the film's original 1937 release. Capra, then at the peak of his fame and very much the Spielberg of his day, had a staggering budget of $4 million (equivalent to over $80 million today) to re-create James Hilton's utopian novel about a noted British diplomat (Colman) who is abducted so that he can succeed a dying High Lama (Jaffe) at a remote Himalayan paradise.