Watching this splendid fantasy, one almost accepts the reality of the fabled kingdom of Shangri-La, which is discovered in the mountains of Tibet by British survivors of a plane crash. Ronald Colman is the English diplomat who struggles to return to the utopia after being forced to leave by his colleagues, but Sam Jaffe nearly steals the film in his two scenes as the High Lama. This visual and visionary classic has haunted successive generations since its initial release in 1937. Yet most who admire the film have never seen it as Capra intended; a ghostly, grainy, severely cut version has passed for the real thing these many years. This makes tonight's presentation of the newly restored Lost Horizon an exciting and long-awaited event! Stephen Gong writes, "The restoration of Lost Horizon, shortened by 24 minutes following its release in 1937, has been a ten-year effort involving a world-wide search of archival film vaults and the painstaking matching and repair of footage from all surviving versions of this important film. A complete soundtrack was located at the National Film Archive, London, and all but six minutes of picture have been recovered. The project was recently completed by restoration expert Robert Gitt (Preservation Supervisor, UCLA Film Archives) using still photographs to fill in the missing scenes."