DVD of the Week: The Good Earth
Monday, April 28th by leinana
Earth Day was last week, but I hope it’s a “holiday” that you readers observe more than one day a year. After going to the local farmer’s market and bringing my organic produce home in a re-usable cloth bag, and tossing my recyclables into the proper containers, I settled down to watch The Good Earth, a movie that is certainly about our relationship to the land, and the all-mighty power of Mother Nature.
The story is about Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan, who are humble Chinese farmers. They work hard and manage to prosper until a drought hits and brings famine with it. Wang Lung refuses to sell his land, and the family is forced to go to a nearby city to look for work. O-Lan and the children are reduced to begging for money in the streets, when the revolution that has been brewing finally breaks out. Wang Lung and his family eventually make it back to their land, but their lives never return to the way things were.
The biggest shame about this movie is the widespread use of non-Asian actors in the main roles, a.k.a. “yellowface.” Anna May Wong, the first female Chinese-American movie star, was up for the role of O-Lan before it was given to Luise Rainer, a German. (Rainer actually won an Oscar for the role.) Wang Lung is played by Paul Muni, who was born in what is now the Ukraine. Even the role of Lotus, Wang Lung’s second wife, is played by Austrian actress Tilly Losch. I suppose that Hollywood pressure and the studio practices of that era are to blame, but it’s really too bad that the filmmakers weren’t as conscious about racism as they were about their message of respect for the “good earth.”
The Good Earth (1937)
DVD Date of Release: January 2006
Based on The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
