Just saw it again on TV, and noticed a flaw in the plot. A (very) brief summary:
Our hero, Ronald Colman, is brought to Shangri-La with a few companions, including his brother George. Loves the place, loves the people, especially Jane Wyatt. Meets the 250-year-old High Lama, and is asked to become the next H.L.
The conflict: brother George isn’t buying any of it and wants to leave, at the urging of one of the local women, named Maria. Maria is ostensibly 80 years old, although she looks 20. In a crucial scene, Ronald is presented with 2 conflicting narratives:
Everyone in Shangri-La lives in peace and harmony and to extreme old age.
(Maria’s) The High Lama is a madman, the place is a shithole, and do I look 80 years old?
Ronald, after much anguish, goes with #2. When they get beyond the valley of Shangri-La, Maria reverts to her actual old age and dies, George falls off a cliff; and Ronald returns to his new role and Jane.
The problem: no explanation is given as to why Maria lied, and what she had to gain by leaving. The version I saw was newly restored and complete, so it’s not like a crucial scene was cut for commercials.
She was tired of life, especially in Shangri-La and wanted to die? Many people would like to be 20 for a long time and then poof, you’re gone. I don’t think the film code at the time would have allowed an explicit suicidal wish fulfillment thing, but it could be inferred.
She didn’t like being constrained by the peaceful but extremely isolated world of Shangri-La. She missed civilization and (I’m guessing) its vices. And I suspect that she thought that she would continue to age normally once on the outside, and not automatically revert back to her actual age.
I just wondered about this and asked on another board, but of course got no answer.
Ron C. asks the High Lama what happens when two men desire one woman, and the High Lama rather airily replies “the man who desires the woman the MOST” is the winner. (how this is determined is unclear). The one who doesn’t want her that bad steps aside, how civilized!
Perhaps this is OK with the native culture, but perhaps Maria got tired of being passed around to various men like a prize cow without any say in the matter. The High Lama said nothing whatsoever about what the women wanted. She said she was treated rather badly there in the dream world of Shangri-La, captured, kept in a dark room. It was not mentioned, but she was escaping her rapist captors.
I think she felt used and abused, fell in love with the brother, saw a way out of a man’s dream world, and wanted to leave with him no matter what happened.
I saw this movie a few years ago and didn’t care for it. Yeah, they bring Ronald Colman to Shangri-La, and his companions are kinda dragged along in the process. They all want to know what’s going on, and Mr. High Lama will only talk to Ron, so he says he’ll ask what’s going to happen to them. Then HL tells RC how special he is, how they think he’ll fit in, and how much trouble they went to to bring him there. Ronny totally forgets that his friends are counting on him to find out what’s going on for them.
Lo-Tsen is a stereotypical, mysterious “woman of the East”. She does not speak English; Conway speaks Chinese but she speaks little to Conway. We are left to surmise as to her motives.
We know that she falls in love with Mallinson despite the language barrier; this no doubt reawakens her passions and her memories of the outside world. She knows the risk of leaving, or at least she knows what the High Lama has said about the risks (instant aging and early death). She determines to take her chances, like a prisoner who knows the risks but attempts to escape anyway. She is not suicidal, but determined either to escape the valley with Mallinson or die trying. She can no longer tolerate her pleasant but emotionally desiccated existence.
I assume you’re talking about the novel? So Lo-Tsen and Mallinson in the novel became Maria and George Conway in the movie?
If so – note the ethnicity change of the woman in question (from Chinese to Russian), presumably so as not to offend 1930s proprieties.
On that note, in addition to the casual sexism of the period noted by salinqmind, there’s the casual racism of the opening scene. Conway has been sent to China to rescue 90 “white people” at risk of being “butchered” in some piddly local revolution. Who cares what these heathens are squabbling about – let’s just get the white folks outta here.
True, but Conway was a British diplomat who was the Foreign Secretary-elect, and his job was to save the British folks. Some Americans came along, but he wasn’t going to stop the revolution and choose the most deserving.
