Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what I’ve seen over the past week either in film or television. On the film side, if I have written a full length review already, I will post a link to that review. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief snippet of my thoughts on the film with a full review to follow at some point later. For television shows, seasons and what not, I’ll post individual comments here about each of them as I see fit.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Lost Horizon

This isn’t the Frank Capra many came to know from films like It Happened One Night, You Can’t Take It With You and It’s a Wonderful Life. Lost Horizon is a meditative examination of the pursuit of simplicity and perfection in a world filled with chaos and destruction.

Based on the celebrated 1933 novel by James Hilton, screenwriter Robert Riskin with a little uncredited help from Sidney Buchman, Lost Horizon finds its characters escaping an impending revolution in China aboard a British aircraft that has been hijacked by an unknown Chinese man who carts them off high into the Himalayas in Tibet. After they crash land, Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) and his fellow passengers discover a hidden oasis high in the mountains. The lamastery sequestered in a temperate paradise is called Shangri-La. Run by a daunting, aged figure, the lost souls find safety, security and happiness in the midst of this beautiful, serene backdrop, all except for Conway’s brother George (John Howard) who insists on escaping at any chance he can in spite of the dangers such an action would cause.

Colman portrays Conway as a disillusioned foreign minster whose ambitions would take the bench if it meant he could live in a perfect world. Considered a harbinger of World War II, the film was made as Hitler’s plans became more readily apparent and conflict was building in the European zone. Capra takes the opportunity to speak out against war, pain, fear and uncertainty with this sublime depiction. A modern audience might suspect that Conway and company have died and that Shangri-La is a representation of heaven, but Capra dashes those beliefs in the film’s final reel. While I would have enjoyed a more esoteric ending, not the typical joyous completion for which Capra is known, the closing scene gives one inestimable hope and suggests that one day, when human civilization is weary of war, perhaps they can build Shangri-La and live in peace and knowledge for eternity. He was a dreamer and as much as his other films built on humor to discover human truths, this dramatic vision is easily his most mature and pensive film.

While I hadn’t intended on writing so much about this film, I couldn’t leave off without recognizing the absolutely stunning art direction and set construction of Stephen Goosson. This magnificent landscape is idealized in every way and the sheer attention to detail deserves recognition as one of the all time great scenic designs.