The Good Earth

Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 2
File size                                : 1.12 GiB
Duration                                 : 2h 18mn
Overall bit rate                         : 1 156 Kbps
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Writing library                          : x264 core 130 r2273 b3065e6
SUBTITLES                                : English, French, Spanish
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth_(film)
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028944/
 
http://image.bayimg.com/503de9bd23c83392b7b4c534d24fadd9ad677f6c.jpg

The Good Earth is a 1937 American romantic drama 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 stars 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.


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 father
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

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.

The movie script was more sympathetic to China than the novel had been. Wang Lung’s son was now a representative of modern China who goes to university and leads the villagers. The family is a wholesome affectionate unit, even the uncle who in the novel exploits Wang Lung, and the sexual aspect of Lotus is played down. The Hays office, which supervised each Hollywood script, demanded more than twenty rewrites to eliminate what it found offensive. 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. Irving Thalberg also envisioned casting only Chinese actors, but had to concede that American audiences were not ready for such a film. 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.

When MGM inquired into the possibility of making the film in China, the Chinese government was divided on how to respond. Initial hostility derived from resentment of the novel, which critics charged focused only on the perceived backwardness of the country while some government officials hoped to have control which would be gone if the film work was done outside China. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek himself intervened, perhaps at the behest of his wife, Mme. Chiang, whose American education made her an advocate for cooperation. Permission was granted on condition that the view of China be favorable, that Chinese government would supervise and have approval of shots done in China, and the unenforced stipulation that the entire cast be Chinese. The government in Nanjing did not foresee the sympathy the film would create and when MGM decided to shoot on location in China officials took extraordinary steps to control the production, forcing the studio to hire a Nationalist general to advise them on authentic settings and costumes (most of this footage was mysteriously lost when it was shipped home and had to be re-shot in California). There were reports that MGM distributed a different version of the film in China.

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