Lost Horizon (1973, Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Sally Kellerman, Bobby Van, George Kennedy, Michael York, Olivia Hussey, James Shigeta, John Gielgud) – Classic Movie Review 10,524

Director Charles Jarrott’s 1972 musical Lost Horizon was a British Royal Command Performance film and has a fine cast, but remaking Frank Capra’s 1937 classic Lost Horizon about an idyllic life in a Tibetan valley as a Burt Bacharach-Hal David musical was a lost cause from the beginning.

True, there is talent aplenty. Peter Finch is fine in the old Ronald Colman role and Ross Hunter’s costly production looks good thanks to Robert Surtees’s gorgeous Technicolor photography and Preston Ames’s production designs.

But then which is worse, Larry Kramer’s philosophising screenplay, the boring songs or Hermes Pan’s ghastly choreography? Jarrott directs creakily, with a reverential heavy-handed tone, unable to bring it back to life.

It also stars Liv Ullmann, Sally Kellerman, Bobby Van, George Kennedy, Michael York, Olivia Hussey, James Shigeta, John Gielgud (as Chang!) and Charles Boyer.

It runs a horrendous 150 minutes but was cut by 23 minutes after its theatrical release.

Also in the cast are Larry Druan, Kent Smith, John Van Dreelen, Miko Taka, Tybee Brascia, Neil Jon, Hedley Mattingly, Virginia Ann Lee and Paul De Lucca.

The singing voices of Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann and Olivia Hussey are all dubbed. Jerry Whitman and Diana Lee provide the singing voices for Finch and Ullmann. Hussey is dubbed by Andra Willis.

The castle set from Camelot (1967) was recycled as Shangri-La.

Undeterred, Finch and Ullmann reconvened for The Abdication (1974).

Hired after Toshirô Mifune turned the role down, John Gielgud described Chang as ‘a very stupid part’. ‘The part is an idiotic walkabout,’ he wrote. ‘Not a moment that gives one the slightest opportunity to act and I feel a bit ashamed of the bribery that makes me accept it.’

Ross Hunter recalled: ‘When Bacharach and David finally delivered the music, we were already deep into pre-production. We knew it was a bum score, but we couldn’t do anything about it.’

Doris Day had the good taste to walk out of the pre-release industry screening. Half of the audience headed for the exit long before the film ended.

The last word goes to Bette Midler: ‘I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical.’

Larry Kramer’s screenplay is based on James Hilton’s original novel. Kramer recalled: ‘It was the one thing I have done in my life that I truly regret. People still laugh about it.’

Larry Kramer was born on 25 June 1935 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and is known for Women in Love (1969), Lost Horizon (1973) and The Normal Heart (2014). He married William David Webster on 24 July 2013. He died of pneumonia on 27 May 2020 in Manhattan, aged 84. He founded AIDS advocacy and protest group ACT UP in 1987.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,524

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