THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (1933)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama / Romance / War

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck / Nils Asther / Walter Connolly

Plot

A Christian missionary held prisoner by a Chinese warlord gets history’s worst case of Stockholm Syndrome.

What I Liked

There simply were not any other films like “The Bitter Tea of General Yen” made in the 1930's.  Of course, I haven’t seen ever film made in the decade; yet I’m absolutely sure of this assertion.  In a movie highly atypical of him, director Frank Capra has one strangely dark scene follow another, romanticizes an interracial relationship, scratches the surface of Buddhist philosophy, and portrays American Christians as ignorant and naïve.  No wonder it didn’t sell well to a Depression-era American audience.  Still, it shows great bravery on the part of all involved to participate in a film with so many taboo themes.  Sure, a cynic could suppose that Capra and crew were hoping that shock value would sell their film.  If they did, they were wrong.  What they ended up with was a very strange piece of work entirely unique from anything else of that medium, in that time and place.

I spent much of the movie simply wondering where the filmmakers were going with this picture; but not in a bad way.  It’s just that the film defies so many early film conventions, even when it comes to plot structure, that figuring out exactly when or how the conflict would end proved mystifying.  Indeed, seeing the strange plot – and the surprisingly complex themes underneath it – unfold is what kept me watching without a moment of boredom.

What I Didn’t Like

Even with how boundary-pushing this movie was, it is still not surprising that a white man was cast to play the Chinese General Yen.  Today that decision might seem politically incorrect in the extreme; however one honestly can’t blame Capra and the others in this case.  To have Barbara Stanwyck actually romantically kiss a real “Chinaman” on the big screen in the 1930's probably would have doomed the careers of all involved in the picture.  They do deserve credit for at first playing off of the stereotypical Chinese villain common in films of the time and then twisting that character into a sympathetic, truly complex character by the conclusion.

Apparently Nils Asther has received a great deal of praise for his performance as the title character.  Other than the aforementioned going against the mold of the Chinese characters of the period, I don’t really see why Asther deserves so much praise.  His accent is ridiculous to the point of pathetic and he never once convinces the viewer, at least this 21^st century viewer, that he is actually Chinese.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

The processes by which Stanwyck’s character does eventually fall in love with the General is certainly difficult to fathom.  In one scene she’s convinced he’s either going to rape her or murder her and in the very next she’s professing her undying love for him.  By the time the Christian missionary walks through his door transformed into a glittering, face-painted, Orientalized (sorry if that’s not the politically correct term) woman and throws herself on her knees, kissing his hand, and saying “I could never leave you,” one is still trying to piece together at what point her heart changed and why.  There are hints here and elsewhere of a kind of breakdown of Stanwyck’s Westernized independence by an increasing sense of submissiveness.  This dom/sub subtext runs through much of the relationship between she and Yen and climaxes with these shots of her at his feet.  Even when the credits roll, it’s the only explanation that makes even a little sense, at least to this viewer.

Perhaps I’m over analyzing and it was simply a matter of the film finally needing to get to its conclusion and the filmmakers not being sure of how to pull it off, so they just did it.  But we’re talking about a filmmaker of the caliber of Capra, I’d doubt that.

My Rating: 3 out of 5