I first read Pearl S Buck's splendid novel in my ninth grade history class, and I enjoyed every thrilling page of it. It was almost inevitable that Hollywood would get hold of it, and considering that it was made in 1937, the results are excellent.<br /><br />Certain things have to be accepted: in 1937 there was no question of casting Asian actors in a major Hollywood film. In a way this renders the end product rather more interesting than if they had been able to use a more authentic-looking cast.<br /><br />With that obstacle to overcome, executive producer Irving Thalberg and director Sidney Franklin (among others) took the trouble to hand-pick a splendid and stellar cast. Paul Muni plays Wang Lung. Muni was at the peak of his powers as an actor during this period, and could very nearly play anything he put his mind to. Once you get past the makeup (it's good, but no one is going to really mistake him for a Chinese man), his performance has all the verisimilitude of his best work.<br /><br />Then there is Luise Rainer. Coming off an Oscar win the previous year for her performance in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD, the Viennese actress's star was on the rise and she was given the plum role of O-lan despite her lack of experience in Hollywood. Her performance won her a second consecutive Oscar, the first time in history that happened.<br /><br />Much criticism has been leveled at Rainer's performance, and her Oscar win here. She has been called wooden and one-note. There is a small grain of truth in that. HOWEVER, that being said, all you need to do is go back to the book. For Rainer, though not Chinese, played O-lan pretty much as Buck wrote her; it is in fact a splendid performance, and one of the best transfers from book to screen I have ever witnessed.<br /><br />As for the rest of the cast, well this was MGM. They had the biggest roster of stars and character actors in Hollywood at the time, and a big budget to pay for the best, and in the end they got the best.<br /><br />The film softens Wang Lung's marriage to O-lan somewhat. In the novel, with wealth come the lusts of the flesh and he takes on a concubine, a move which devastates his wife but her feelings as a mere woman do not concern him. In the film, a contrite Wang Lung returns to his wife on her deathbed the two pearls he had taken from her years before, realizing too late that she was his true love.<br /><br />Corny, yes. But that's Hollywood. Considering the obstacles they were up against, the film might well have opened to screams of laughter. But despite the noticeable dearth of real Asians in the cast, this film has worn surprisingly well with the passage of seventy-three years. In fact the most amazing thing about this film is how good it is, when it might so easily have been a disaster.