The Good Earth (1937)

Directed by Sidney Franklin. Starring Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly, Charley Grapewin, Tilly Losch, Soo Yong, Jessie Ralph, Keye Luke, Roland Liu.

Even if you’re able to look past all the headlining white actors playing Chinese roles, this is still a rather sluggish and feeble epic whose size and self-importance dwarfs its contrived tragedies/triumphs and airless humanity. Narrative depicts the fluctuating fortunes of farmer Muni and wife Rainer through famine and recovery, despair and temptation. Standout sequences are the ones that should be seen on the biggest screen possible—the devastating rainstorm and the locust swarm—but the human drama falters with didactic, moralizing dialogue and a pair of lead performances strangled by the monotonous conceit of their physical and emotional hardships (how Rainer’s belabored vulnerability and subservience netted her the Best Actress Academy Award is beyond me). Those who greatly admire Pearl S. Buck’s Pulitzer-winning book are apt to be more receptive to the pic’s large-scale production and simplistic life lessons; others will hear Muni’s final line (“O-Lan…you are the earth”) and just roll their eyes. Karl Freund’s photography also won an Oscar. Directors Victor Fleming and Gustav Machaty provided uncredited contributions; final film for legendary Hollywood producer Irving “The Boy Wonder” Thalberg (he died a few months before the premiere).

41/100