Diana Lee,Bobby Van & chorus

Diana Lee,Bobby Van & chorus

About Diana Lee,Bobby Van & chorus

Lost Horizon is a 1973 musical film directed by Charles Jarrott and starring Peter Finch, John Gielgud, Liv Ullmann, Michael York, Sally Kellerman, Bobby Van, George Kennedy, Olivia Hussey, James Shigeta and Charles Boyer. The film is a remake of Frank Capra's film of the same name, with screenplay by Larry Kramer. Both films are based on James Hilton's novel. However, the 1973 version was a notorious critical and commercial failure. It is considered one of the last in a string of box office musical failures which came in the wake of the success of The Sound of Music. Attempts to update the idea of Shangri-La with its racial inequalities intact, coupled with old-fashioned songs effectively sealed its fate. Pauline Kael noted that Shangri-La was depicted as: a middle-class geriatric utopia [where]... you can live indefinitely, lounging and puttering about for hundreds of years... the Orientals are kept in their places, and no blacks... are among the residents. There's probably no way to rethink this material without throwing it all away. After derided preview screenings Columbia Pictures tried to re-cut the film, but to no avail. Critic John Simon remarked that it "must have arrived in garbage rather than in film cans". The songs are by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, whose long partnership hit rocky ground within months of this film's release. In a motif similar to the use of Technicolor in The Wizard of Oz, the film only becomes a musical in the central Shangri-La sequence, with the framing 'civilization' sequences played as straight drama. The film was not available on video for years until Pioneer Entertainment released a reconstructed version of the longer cut on laserdisc. It is out of print and now fetches high prices on eBay.

Taken from Last.fm

32 listeners  ·  170 plays via Last.fm