Lost Horizon (1937)

Chang: There is a tribe of porters some 500 miles from here. That is our only contact with the outside world. Every now and again, depending on favorable weather of course, they make the journey.
George Conway: How do we get in touch with them?
Chang: Well, in that respect, you are exceedingly fortunate. We are expecting a shipment from them almost any time now.
Barnard: Just want to do mean by, almost any time now?
Chang: Well, we've been expecting this particular shipment for the past two years...

---

High Lama: It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision, long, long ago. I saw all the nations strengthening, not in wisdom, but in the vulgar passions and the will to destroy. I saw the machine power multiplying, until a single weaponed man might match a whole army. I foresaw a time when man, exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure, would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving, that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and of culture that I could, and preserve them here, against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity, crashing headlong against each other, propelled by an orgy of greed and brutality. A time must come my friend, when this orgy will spend itself. When brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time, is why I avoided death, and am here. And why you were brought here. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. For here, we shall be with their books and their music, and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind! When that day comes, it is our hope that the brotherly love of Shangri-La will spread throughout the world. Yes, my son; When the strong have devoured each other, the Christian ethic may at last be fulfilled and the meek shall inherit the earth.
Robert Conway: I understand you father.

---

Robert Conway: It is very common here to live to a very ripe old age. Climate, diet - the mountain water you might say. But we like to believe it's the absence of struggle in the way we live. In your countries, on the over hand, how often do you hear the expression, "He worried himself to death", or "This thing or that thing on that killed him".
Chang: Oh, very often.
Robert Conway: And very true. Your lives are, as a rule, shorter. Not so much by natural death, as by indirect suicide.

---

read more quotes from Lost Horizon...

Designing the numerous elaborate sets took over a year.
Its budget was $1.5 million and the film ultimately cost almost twice as much as that, a sum significantly higher than most of Columbia's other output combined.
The film took 10 months to make in total, though in between gaps in filming Capra's crew managed to squeeze in Richard Boleslawski's Theodora Goes Wild.
read more facts about Lost Horizon...