Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Thirty-Seven: Another World

Frank Capra is a director who keeps popping up in this decade, two of his films - It Happened One Night and You Can't Take It With You both won best picture and best director while Mr Deeds Goes to Town won Capra Best Director also. But Capra directed two more films that also were nominated for Best Picture but didn't win him any director nominations and one of those is Lost Horizon. The previous Capra films all seem to have several running themes about money being the root of all evil and culture clash romances they're all quite light in tone. However Lost Horizon deviates from this pattern as it sees a plane crash and its five passengers lead to a mysterious place called Shangri-La located in the Himalayan Mountains. The 'leader' is Robert Conway who is leaving with the others, including his brother, from China after rescuing them from the country's rebels. The other passengers are a paleontologist, a plumber who conned shareholders out of their money and a terminally ill woman. They are eventually rescued by a man named Chang who takes them all back to Shangri-La, Conway learns that he has been picked to take over running Shangri-La by the old leader who dies soonafter. However Conway is convinced by his brother to leave Shangri-La, his brother also takes a girl who he has fallen in love with only to find out that she is an old woman because people don't age on Shangri-La. The end of the film sees Conway rescued and taken back to Britain only to return to Shangri-La, without his brother who has commited suicide.

Lost Horizon is a lot different from Capra's films mainly because of the scale of the filming, it is beautifully photographed and there are some elboarte exterior shots. Ronald Colman as Conway is the dashing lead he performance is both measured and multi-layered while all the supporting cast give good turns notably Isabel Jewell as the terminally ill Gloria. However it is H.B. Warner as Chang who is the star of the show, he makes us intrigued by his character and Shangri-La as a place and is his the most interesting performance. In fact Warner was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost out in the end, however the film did win two awards for Best Editing and a much deserved Best Art Direction award. This film definitely proved Capra could do something different however after this, the next film on the list directed by him is You Can't Take It With You which returned to his old style.