The New Pictures: The Good Earth

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Wang the farmer now becomes the patrician head of the House of Lung. He returns to the country. He buys the Great House. He cuts off his queue in the western fashion. He dons silk. He forgets the land in his passion for Lotus (Tilly Losch), a sing-song girl whom he makes his second wife. To her he gives 0-lan's two pearls.

Then, for a smashing finale, the script forsakes Pearl Buck for the first time to invent a spectacular locust plague. In what is the cinema's first investigation of what may prove a fertile field for drama—the War against the Insect—Wang and his men. ankle deep in bugs, battle with fire, clubs and feet the swarm which drones down the valley, blackening the sky. Some of these incredible scenes were shot in China; others, showing close-ups of locusts feeding, were shot during a grasshopper plague in Utah with a microscopic lens attached to a camera. Finally the wind comes, blowing the locusts back up the valley. Back to the sing-song house goes Lotus. Back to the land goes Wang. Back to Olan, just in time, go the pearls.