The Good Earth

First came marriage, an arranged union of peasant farmer Wang Lung (Paul Muni) and kitchen slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer). Then, through poverty and wealth, family and betrayal, war and pestilence, came love.

From Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth combines Wang and O-Lan's story with a sweeping saga of China in upheaval. Muni and Rainer had both won 1936 Academy Awards and Rainer repeated here with another "Best Actress" Oscar. The film also won for "Best Cinematography"—with camerawork most powerfully on display in the astonishing locust-plague sequence.