Lost Horizon (1937 Film) - Later Releases

Later Releases

In 1942, the film was re-released as The Lost Horizon of Shangri-La. A lengthy drunken speech delivered by Robert Conway, in which he cynically mocked war and diplomacy, was deleted because it was feared such sentiments expressed at the height of World War II would prove to be unpopular with audiences. Capra felt the film made no sense without the scene, and in later years film critic Leslie Halliwell described the missing 12 minutes as "vital."

In 1952, a 92-minute version of the film was released. It aimed to downplay the supposedly Communist themes associated with utopia, as well as to limit the sympathy shown towards the Chinese, whose relationship with the American government grew strained in the years following World War II.

In 1973, the American Film Institute initiated a restoration of the film. The project was undertaken by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Columbia Pictures and took 13 years to complete. Although all 132 minutes of the original soundtrack were recovered, only 125 minutes of film could be found, so the seven minutes of missing film footage were replaced with a combination of publicity photos of the actors in costume taken during filming and still frames depicting the missing scenes.