Opera House

Grey River Argus, 13 May 1938, Page 12

Opera House

“THE GOOD EARTH." Metro Goldwyn Mayer, producers of an unending chain of the world’s greatest, motion pictures as “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” “David Copperfield,” “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “San Francisco,” “The Great Ziegfeld,” “Rose Marie" and many others, now brings to you the greatest achievement of them all, “The Good Earth,” screening at the Opera House Theatre to-day, to-night and to-mor-row. Starring Luise Rainer and Paul Muni, the Academy Award, winners who gave the best performance of 1936 in “The Great Ziegfeld” and “The Story of Louise Pasteur,” are now brought together in the greatest picture of all times, a picture in which Luise Rainer again gained that coveted honour. In “The Good Earth,” her acting can be only described as a lustrous projection of quiet beauty and absolutely perfect from beginning to end. The story concerns the heart-breaking struggles of two Chinese peasants, husband and wife (played by Paul Muni and Luise Rainer) to eke an existence from the earth that is subject to every conceivable kind of pestilence. The scenes of a storm breaking just when the Chinese are gathering in a crop of wheat and their frantic efforts to defeat the elements, the whole tragic business being intensified by the fact that Luise Rainer (O-lan) is about tn have a child, but does her bit to the point of collapse to assist the others, Luise Rainer treated as meiely an animal to work about the place and accepting her lot with the impassiveness of a beast of burden whose spirit has been broken, these scenes eat right into you. See the famine in the North! The Revolution in the South; embattled farmers rout locusts whose legions hide the sun; enchanted Chinese gardens of marble pools and lily ponds, where nightingalel- - Men run a gauntlet of death 'to avoid conscription in the.iarmies of war lords. The looting of the “Great House of Loo”; fire dragons of the Chinese new year celebrations. See the drama that the author of “The Good Earth” tore from the heart of a man, a woman, and a people! Others prominent in the cast are Walter Connolly, Tilly Tosch, Jessie Ralph. Charles Grapewin.