" Lost Horizon." At the Tivoli
THE CINEMA
NOTHING reveals men's characters more than their Utopias : the scientific sentimentality of Mr. Wells, the art-and-craftiness of William Morris, Mr. Shaw's eternal sewing-machine, Samuel Butler's dusty alpaca. Shangri-La must be counted among the less fortunate flights of the imagination, the lamaserai in Thibet ruled by a Grand Llama, a Belgian priest who discovered the rich valley among the mountains in the eighteenth century and who was still alive when Robert Conway, explorer, diplomat and—rather improbably—Foreign Secretary elect was kid- napped from a Chinese town and brought there by aeroplane. This Utopia closely resembles a film star's luxurious estate on Beverley Hills : flirtatious pursuits through grape arbours, splashings and (livings in blossomy pools under improbable waterfalls, and rich and enormous meals. " Every man carries in his heart a Shangri-La " : but I prefer myself the harps and golden crowns and glassy seas of an older mythology. Shangri- La is intended to represent a haven of moderation, beauty and peace in the middle of an uncompromising and greedy world, but what Conway finds there, what he loses in a weak moment of disbelief, and struggles across the Himalayas to find again, is something incurably American : a kind of aerated idealism (" We have one simple rule, Kindness ") and, of course, a girl (Miss Jane Wyatt, one of the dumber stars), who has read all the best books (his own included) and has the coy comradely manner of a not too advanced schoolmistress.
It is a very long picture, this disappointing successor to Mr. Deeds, and a very dull one as soon as the opening scenes are over. These are brilliantly written and directed, and show Conway (Mr. Ronald Colman) organising the aerial evacuation of the white inhabitants from a Chinese town in the middle of a revolution before he takes the last plane himself in company with a crooked financier wanted by the police, a prostitute (sentimental variety), a scientist (comic), and a younger brother. Here the Capra-Riskin partnership is at its best, and we arc unprepared for the disappointments which follow : the flavour- less uplifting dialogue, the crude humour, the pedestrian direction, and the slack makeshift construction. " You shouldn't look at the bottom of the mountains. Try looking at the top." So Chang, the suave philosophical second-in- command of Shangri-La, addresses the prostitute who believes that she is dying of consumption (one of the virtues of this mysterious valley is health, the body beautiful, and a life which goes on and on and on). It might be Wilhelmina Stitch translated into American prose, and one can hardly believe that this script is from the same hands as Mr. Deeds, though perhaps Mr. James Hilton, the author of the novel and of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, may be responsible for the sentimentality of these sequences.
Of course, the picture isn't quite as bad as that. It does attempt, however clumsily and sentimentally, more than the average film; a social conscience is obscurely at work, but at work far less effectively than in Mr. Deeds, and as for the humour—it consists only of Mr. Edward Everett Horton wearing Eastern clothes. The conscious humour that is to say, for the glimpses of English political life give a little much needed relief. " The Far Eastern Conference must be post- poned. We cannot meet these nations without Conway " : the Prime Minister's measured utterances to his Cabinet gathered Gladstonianly round him fall with an odd sound on cars accustomed to more dispensable foreign secretaries. But it is in the last sequence that the Capra-Riskin collaboration fails most disastrously. Conway, persuaded by his younger brother that the Grand Llama has lied to him, that there is misery and injustice in this seeming Utopia, makes his way back to China across the mountains. A few newspaper headlines tell us that Conway has reached safety, and it is only at second- hand in a long uncinematic scene in a London club that we learn what we should have seen with our own eyes : Conway's reaction to " civilisation." If the long ,dull ethical sequences had been cut to the bone there would have been plenty of room for the real story : the shock of western crudity and injustice on a man returned from a more gentle and beautiful way of life.
GRAHAM GREENE.
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