Luise Rainer humble Chinese peasant subservient to her husband and speaking little during the entire film. Her comparative muteness, stated historian Andrew Sarris, was "an astounding tour de force after her hysterically chattering telephone scene in "The Great Ziegfeld"", and contributed to her winning her second Best Actress Oscar. The award made her the first actress to win two consecutive Oscars, a feat not matched until Katharine Hepburn's two wins thirty years later. In later years, however, Rainer felt that winning the two Oscars so early may have been the "worst possible thing" to befall her career. She said that it made
Millennium Actress actress reveals that she stole it for the director out of jealousy for her youth. Right after, the military policeman, now a crippled veteran, comes to the studio to apologize for his war crimes, and gives Chiyoko a letter from the painter. After Chiyoko leaves to resume her desperate search north, Genya hears from the scarred policeman that the painter was tortured and killed after his arrest. As Ginei Studios begins filming the last scene of a movie, an earthquake shakes the studio and causes the roof to collapse on to the set, the spaceship from the first scene. Genya