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"What are they, a bunch of nuts?" "Fascinating ones." The utopian theme pursued in Lost Horizon is taken for a spin in a New York brownstone, where zaniness is a full-time position. Grandpa (Lionel Barrymore) collects stamps, chases away the taxman, and presides over the oddballs bouncing across the proscenium, each with their own cheerful shtick. Blocked playwright (Spring Byington), wannabe ballerina (Ann Miller), querulous inventor (Donald Meek), firecracker artisan (Samuel S. Hinds), sponging Russkie (Mischa Auer), xylophone tickler (Dub Taylor)... The other side has a Wall Street tycoon (Edward Arnold) with a munitions deal and an uninterested heir (James Stewart), between dropouts and snobs is the stenographer (Jean Arthur) like Lang's Metropolis mediatrix sliding down the bannister. "You know how cockeyed my sense of value is." An enchanted, controlled chaos, cultivated by Frank Capra out of Kaufman and Hart (plus a note or two from Eliot's The Four Quartets). Fearlessness is the main virtue taught by the cracker-barrel crackpot, his Americanism is but one "ism" in a philosophical market, the house's Red Flags are naturally mistaken for something else. "Who's asking you to be rational?" The families meet for a dinner that never comes, a wrestling move and a cellar explosion later and everyone's cooling their heels in the drunk tank. The unfinished painting, the "Home Sweet Home" sign that falls right on cue, even the raven has his part to play. "Life is running around inside of me like a squirrel!" The musicality of Capra's filming prepares the famous climax, the living room empty and then swirling from a harmonica duet and the eruption of soloists into an ensemble. The counterculture avant la lettre, and there's Penn's Alice's Restaurant. "It's just like a play, isn't it?" With H.B. Warner, Halliwell Hobbes, Mary Forbes, Lillian Yarbo, Eddie Anderson, Clarence Wilson, and Harry Davenport. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |