Director Frank Capra and future movie superstar Barbara Stanwyck were on the rise at Columbia Pictures in the early years of the sound era, thanks to a partnership that elevated both of their careers.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) is the peak of their collaboration, an exotic drama set in China. Stanwyck as Megan Davis, a New York society girl with a heart of gold and a backbone of steel who comes East to marry her betrothed, Dr. Robert ‘Bob’ Strike (Gavin Gordon), scion of a wealthy American family who chooses missionary work over the family business. When he delays the wedding for a humanitarian mission to save orphans from town under fire in a raging civil war, she strikes out with him and ends up trapped behind enemy lines.
Coming to her rescue is the titular General Yen (Nils Asther), a western-educated warlord with an American advisor (Walter Connolly) helping him wring every last yen from his territory while he hangs on to power. Yen is a ruthless Chinese warlord with great manners and no regard for human life at the lower rungs of society, yet the idealistic Megan starts to fall for him.
True to the times, Yen is played by a Caucasian in make-up and eye-lifts. This insensitive and objectionable tradition was common all the way through the forties—for decades, Charlie Chan was played on screen by white actors—and practically mandatory for Hollywood whenever there is a suggestion of a love story between a Caucasian woman and a man from another race. (And usually the other direction too, though apparently it’s okay for white men to make love to women of other races.)
Given that caveat, the Danish-born Asther is superb in the role. Yen is a complicated mix of Western education and Eastern philosophy, a master of diplomacy, a deal maker, and a man obsessed with Megan’s selflessness and sacrifice as well as her beauty. He’s a darkly romantic precursor to Prince Prospero, the cruel character played by Vincent Price in Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death. Not that he’s wicked so much as mercenary and Machiavellian, but he’s nonetheless determined to “school” this naïve westerner in the true nature of life outside of the safety of high society while he keeps her close. But he doesn’t want to conquer her. He wants to win her. Capra creates a marvelous and complicated love story between the two without allowing so much a kiss to be shared between them. He communicates intimacy and emotion in other ways, but the mutual attraction and fascination is unmistakable.
For all the blithe racism in the portraits of Chinese society and the stereotypes within, Capra isn’t shy about acknowledging the racism from the American colonials. The Strike family has carved out an oasis of western culture in the middle of Shanghai, the better to keep their distance from the yellow devils. “They’re all tricky, treacherous and immoral,” complains Mrs. Strike. “I can’t tell one from the other. They’re all Chinamen to me.” And Yen, for all his ruthlessness, is less objectionable than the ostensibly “cultured” Jones, a man as corrupt as any of Capra’s big capital villains. If Yen is the product of a culture of warlords, Jones is something between a corporate power broker and a mob boss in the wild East working under the protection of his territorial Godfather Yen.
It could be Capra’s answer to the glamour of Josef von Sternberg’s films with Marlene Dietrich. Cinematographer Joseph Walker gives the film a mix of the exotic and the romantic, an alluring beauty both intoxicating and forbidden. A far cry from the big city bustle of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or the small-town nostalgia of It’s a Wonderful Life.
The careers of both Capra and Stanwyck took off after this film, Stanwyck anchoring bigger and more prestigious productions as she became the highest-paid actress in the U.S. and Capra helming some of the most beloved classics of American cinema. They reunited for one last collaboration with Meet John Doe. The Bitter Tea of General Yen remains my favorite of the five films they made together.
Toshi Mori and Richard Loo costar.
Black and white
Also on Blu-ray and DVD and on SVOD through Amazon Video and/or other services. Availability may vary by service.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen [Blu-ray]
The Bitter Tea of General Yen [DVD]
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