I remember as a kid in the 60’s that I saw a movie about a colony of people who lived in the snowy mountains. They did not age as long as they stayed in the mountain community. Some guy found them; I believe he was the survivor of a plane crash. He, of course, falls in love with one of the beautiful young women and ultimately convinces her to leave with him. Once she crossed the community “boundary”, the magic of agelessness was no more and she aged many many decades in the matter of minutes and died on the mountainside in the cold.
I remember I liked the movie as a kid. I wonder, as an adult, if it was actually any good. Do you know the name of the movie and who starred in it?
I just finished reading about it. I’m happy to find that it was, indeed, a good movie!! Too often what I liked as a kid turns out to be ultra cheesy through adult eyes.
I think I will try to find this movie and watch it again. It has all of the elements of drama and fantasy that I like. Who doesn’t want to live in Shangri-La?
Nitpick: Jane Wyatt’s character, the one that Ronald Colman’s character falls in love with, does not age when she leaves at the end because she is not older than she looks. It is another woman*, who I think was jealous and wanted Colman for herself, who aged like that when she left Shangri-La. This is what happened in the movie, anyway, I can’t speak to the book, although I did read it a very very long time ago.
One of my favorite movies; the restored version has some sections where there is audio but no video available, so they included the audio with still photos of the characters. It’s a little jarring, but it doesn’t actually cover a large number of minutes, and I’m glad they included these semi-recovered scenes.
*Not sure, but I think this character was named Maria, played by Margo (niece of Xavier Cugat).
Roddy
It was “Lost Horizon” film with Ronald Colman, and I forget the female stars. It closely followed a very popular book of the same name by James Hilton that was published in the 1930s.
It was made into a musical in 1973 that’s significant mainly for being considered one of the worst films of the '70s and one of the worst musicals ever made.
I think it influenced the YA novel and movie Tuck Everlasting, which is set in the Appalachians but is about a family that doesn’t age so long as they don’t leave their mountain.
The woman who leaves Shangri-La is with the brother of Colman’s character; it is her doing that they have all gone. Colman didn’t really want to leave. She didn’t really want either brother; she just wanted out.
Except that’s not the plot of Tuck Everlasting. They’re not bound to the place, and in fact leave at the end of the book, only coming back decades later.
