There was an era during which concious Westerners considered Tibet as a terrestrial paradise where monks holded the secret of eternal life.
At the beginning of the XXth century, Zionism was imposed to Palestinians, fascism was spreading in Europe, America was dealing with a serious economic crisis and Gandhi strived to release India from British occupation.
During this time, China fought against foreign traffickers, internal revolts, Japanese soldiers, famine and invasions. Here and there, in Chinese territory, British, American and Soviet incomers had established their trade, their railroads, their armies, their planes, their religion, and their cultures. The Chinese revolution carried out by peasants would change this order for several decades...
In 1933, during the evacuation of Western citizens from Chinese territories, the plane of a British diplomat is diverted towards Himalayan tops and is crushed in the eternal snow. Intended for an inevitable death, the passengers are guided towards Shangri-La (passage of the Shangri mountain), a terrestrial paradise out of time and space.
In 1937, Frank Capra gave life to James Hilton's novel, Lost Horizon, in which appears the first stammerings put in images by the Occident on a way of freedom distinct from the eschatological approach inherent in monotheist religions.
It is certainly a naive vision of Tibet, former to what the Dalai Lama and Tibetan monks made us discover because the Tibetan oasis is probably less paradisiacal than Capra's one. Nevertheless, this film translates a research likely to fill in a lack of belief that started around the beginning of last century and amplified since then.