It Can't be Merely Our Kind Heart
Film Review by an unknown reviewer
[This review of The Good Earth first appeared in The Family Circle magazine, March 1937]
SITUATION - Paul Muni, Chinese peasant farmer, takes a slave wife, Luise Rainer, from the kitchen of The Great House of a landed estate. She is not pretty, but a willing worker, and she bears him two sons and a daughter. Through her good sense and thrift, he prospers, buying more land. Just when it seems that he is on the road to wealth, the famine strikes, and Paul's indolent uncle, Walter Connolly, tries to persuade him to sell the land. But Luise Rainer objects, and instead they go south, to the city. There they nearly starve, until the revolution breaks out and Luise finds a bag of jewels during the looting. She is captured by the soldiers and is to be shot, but is spared by the arrival of the soldiers' marching orders. She turns the jewels over to Paul, and they go home, rich. The sons grow up, and Paul listens to the persuasive voice of his uncle and takes unto himself a second wife, Tilly Losch, a dancing girl. He buys The Great House and installs her in a part of it. Older Son goes to school, while Younger Son stays behind to manage the estate - and to succumb to the wiles of Tilly Losch. Paul finds them together and orders Younger Son out of the house. Older Son returns, and with him a plague of locusts. He insists that they fight the plague with fire, and in the terrific battle, Father and Younger Son are reunited. Paul sells The Great House, getting rid of Tilly. Then, at the wedding of Older Son to a beautiful girl, Luise Rainer dies, and Paul wanders out into the night, disconsolate.
COMMENT - It is a simple story, and simply made into a motion picture. In this simplicity lies its strength. Even in moments of great joy and sorrow, there is simplicity. In one instance it is breath-taking. It is some time after the wedding feast, and Paul Muni is working in the fields, threshing wheat. Luise Rainer comes to his side silently, and picks up a scythe and starts to do her share of the day's work, like a dutiful wife. For a moment there is silence; then she stops work, stands up straight, and says merely, "I am with child." Stolidly, matter-of-factly said; then she turns back to work. That moment is tremendous drama, and indicative of the quiet strength of this picture.
Though slow in tempo, it captures te mood of the Pearl Buck book, and the good earth is a living thing to you, the audience. It is a dramatic thing, for from it springs all the joy and all the sorrow of the ignorant Chinese peasant. This undertone of drama makes every foot of the picture vitally interesting.
The performances of the two stars, Muni and Rainer, are nothing short of great. Paul Muni reaches a peak seldom if ever before touched, in my opinion, in motion pictures. Luise Rainer, particularly in the last half of the picture, is his equal. Tilly Losch has little to do, but does her sirenish role well. Walter Connolly, as the thieving, rascally, sponging uncle, is excellent.
The climax, when the locust horde sweeps down over the land threatening the crops, and the battle to save those crops, is awe-inspiring. (Also too loud in spots.)
Sidney Franklin's direction is flawless. For years he has been one of the better of Hollywood's "better" directors, but this picture lifts him to an eminence where he'll be pretty lonely. The art direction of Cedric Gibbons is beautiful, and we predict that the photography of Karl Freund will win the Academy award.
If I have not done this picture jutice (and I fear that I have not), it is simply because I do not know how.
OPINION - I do not know what a great picture is, theoretically. But I'll vote for this one's being great until I'm better educated - theoretically. Its producer, the late Irving Thalberg, could not have asked for a more towering monument.
[This review of The Good Earth first appeared in The Family Circle magazine, March 1937]
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The Family Circle March 1937