Could well be, that's the obvious answer. Anyone here read the novel?
Yes, I have. I've also been fortunate to see this film before on the Silver Screen and, yesterday, I was lucky enough to see it two more times. It's a beautiful and hopeful film, and one I wouldn't mind seeing again every year or two.
To answer your question, I think the Buddhist philosophy might have been played down for a couple of reasons:
1) The film was made in 1937. The Great Depression was still raging throughout the world and people likely turned to the movies for an escape. Escapist entertainment, let's face it, tends to be long on generating an uplifting emotional response in the audience and short on things that will make people think (like philosophy). And if nothing else, watching this film will take your mind off yourself and the problems of the world for a couple of hours. For the Depression-weary audiences of 1937, this film was a badly needed tonic. No need to go into the how and why of Shangri-La: just the possibility that such a place
might exist was enough.
For the record, the audiences I saw it with in Depression-weary 2009 America didn't seem to appreciate it any less than their counterparts of 1937, judging from the applause.
2) The typical audiences of 1937 might have been considered by movie studio executives ill-equipped to handle Buddhist philosophy. What I mean is: when
Enter the Dragon was made more than thirty-five years later, there's an early scene in the film where Bruce Lee is talking to a Buddhist monk. It's a brief exchange, but it
does go a long way toward explaining the "hall of mirrors" scene near the end.
However, despite the scene helping the film along a bit and not merely being talking for the sake of talking, it was still cut for the film's 1973 release. And as best I can remember, the reason given by the studio for excising it was simply that audiences in 1973 "couldn't handle it." That is, Buddhist philosophy was still thought to be so esoteric that the audiences of the day would likely find it puzzling rather than entertaining.
The scene was restored for the 1998 re-release of the film, which is how I came to learn of it. Viewed from the perspective of 1998, the cut was baffling, but studio executives will do whatever they think is best to help a film go over with as wide an audience as possible.
In the case of
Lost Horizon, that meant downplaying the Buddhist angle in the film. The good news is that seeing the film might have prompted people to pick up the book. And the book does spend some time exploring the philosophy behind Shangri-La. In fact, that was the primary reason I tracked down a copy: because I was told it went into more of the "why" behind Shangri-La than the film did.
I hope this helped answer your question. Or at least entertained you if it didn't. :)
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