The Good Earth (film)

The Good Earth
original film poster
Directed by	Sidney Franklin Victor Fleming Gustav Machatý
Produced by	Irving Thalberg
Written by	Pearl S. Buck (novel) Donald Davis (play) Owen Davis (play) Talbot Jennings Tess Slesinger Claudine West
Starring	Paul Muni Luise Rainer Walter Connolly Tilly Losch Charley Grapewin
Music by	Herbert Stothart Edward Ward
Cinematography	Karl Freund
Editing by	Basil Wrangell
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	January 29, 1937
Running time	138 min.
Language	English
Budget	$2,800,000 (estimated)

The Good Earth (1937) is a film about Chinese farmers who struggle to survive. It was adapted by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger, and Claudine West from the play by Donald Davis and Owen Davis, which was in itself based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck The film was directed by Sidney Franklin, Victor Fleming (uncredited) and Gustav Machaty (uncredited).

The film starred Paul Muni as Wang Lung. For her role as his wife O-Lan, Luise Rainer won an Academy Award for Best Actress. The film also won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Karl Freund. It was nominated for Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture. Its world premiere was at the elegant Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles.

Plot

Farmer Wang Lung (Paul Muni) marries O-Lan (Luise Rainer), a lowly servant at the Great House, the residence of the most powerful family in their village. O-Lan proves to be an excellent wife, hard working and uncomplaining. Wang Lung prospers. He buys more land, and O-Lan gives birth to two sons and a daughter. Meanwhile, the Great House begins to decline.

All is well until a drought and the resulting famine drive the family to the brink. Desperate, Wang Lung considers the advice of his pessimistic, worthless uncle (Walter Connolly) to sell his land for food, but O-Lan opposes it. Instead, they travel south to a city in search of work. The family survives by begging and stealing. When a revolutionary gives a speech to try to drum up support for the army approaching despite rain in the north, Wang Lung and O-Lan realize the drought is over. They long to return to their farm, but they have no money for an ox, seed, and food.

The city changes hands and O-Lan joins a mob looting a mansion. However, she is knocked down and trampled upon. When she comes to, she finds a bag of jewels overlooked in the confusion. This windfall allows the family to go home and prosper once more. O-Lan asks only to keep two pearls for herself.

Years pass. Wang Lung's sons grow up into educated young men, and he has grown so wealthy that he purchases the Great House. Then, Wang Lung becomes besotted with Lotus (Tilly Losch), a pretty, young dancer at the local tea house, and makes her his second wife. He begins to find fault with the worn-out O-Lan and gives her pearls to Lotus.

When Wang Lung discovers that Lotus has seduced Younger Son (Roland Lui), he orders his son to leave. Then a swarm of locusts threatens the entire village. Using a strategy devised by Elder Son (Keye Luke), everyone unites to try to save the crops. Just when all seems lost, the wind shifts direction, taking the danger away. The near-disaster brings Wang Lung back to his senses. He reconciles with Younger Son. On the latter's wedding day, Wang Lung returns the pearls to O-Lan before she dies, exhausted by a hard life.

Cast

	Paul Muni as Wang Lung, a farmer		Tilly Losch as Lotus
	Luise Rainer as O-Lan, Wang Lung's wife		Charley Grapewin as Old Father, Wang Lung's parent
	Walter Connolly as Wang Lung's uncle		Jessie Ralph as Cuckoo

Yong Soo	as Aunt
Keye Luke	as Elder Son
Roland Lui	as Younger Son
Suzanna Kim	as Little Fool, Wang Lung's simpleminded daughter
Ching Wa Lee	as Ching, Wang Lung's friend and later steward of his lands
Harold Huber	as Cousin
Olaf Hytten	as Liu, the grain merchant
William Law	as the gateman
Mary Wong	as Little Bride

Production

Before Herbert Stothart and Edward Ward were engaged to provide the music, negotiations took place with Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who is known to have made some musical sketches for the score before the plan fell through.

Pearl Buck intended the film to be cast with all Chinese or Chinese-American actors.^{[citation needed]} Irving Thalberg also envisioned casting only Chinese actors, but had to concede that American audiences were not ready for such a film.^{[citation needed]}

Though Anna May Wong had been suggested for the role of O-Lan, the Hays Code anti-miscegenation rules required Paul Muni's character's wife to be played by a white actress. MGM offered Wong the role of Lotus, but she refused, stating, "You're asking me - with Chinese blood - to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters." Many of the characters were played by Western actors made to look Asian with aid of make-up techniques developed by Jack Dawn and used for the first time in this film. However, some of the supporting cast did include Chinese American actors.

Because the Second Sino-Japanese War was in progress, the Chinese government threatened not to approve the movie if any actors of Japanese descent were cast.

Thalberg died before the movie was completed. The film credits stated that this was his "last great achievement".

The film's budget was $2.8 million, a small fortune at the time, and took three years to make. A five-hundred-acre farm in Chatsworth, California was transformed into a replica of Chinese farmland for this film. Second unit footage of China itself was included in the film, to give it more authenticity, including the memorable locust plague.

Awards

The Good Earth was nominated for a total of five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Direction (Sidney Franklin), Best Cinematography (Karl Freund), and Best Film Editing (Basil Wrangell). In addition to the Best Actress award (Luise Rainer), the film won for Best Cinematography.

External links

• The Good Earth at the Internet Movie Database
• The Good Earth at AllRovi
• The Good Earth at the TCM Movie Database