Dad's Movies: The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

Today we have The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

This movie came up conveniently while I am reading this book on director Frank Capra (this was one of his earlier films, perhaps the earliest important one) and it was an interesting choice as it's not really the stereotypical Capra movie like It's A Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

This is mainly an "exotic" romantic drama, set as it is during a Chinese civil war. The film is tough sledding for a modern audience as you'd expect given the time it was made, the casting of a Swedish actor to play the Chinese general, and the usual colonialist dismissal of other cultures. However, again given the context of the time, the movie does push some boundaries here and there.

The American missionaries aren't perfect and there is doubt expressed in the dialogue about whether their work in China is worthwhile (this is much more prominent in the source novel which doesn't have the romantic angle but is instead more focused on the philosophical differences between Western and Chinese culture) but the biggest thing here is the potential for a relationship between  Stanwyk's character, the fiancee of an American missionary, and the Chinese general. In fact she even has a dream sequence where Yen comes to her bed in the night and is clearly meant to be sexual. This was a pre-code film so anything even suggesting of desire between a white woman and any man not similarly white was soon to be forbidden in American movies which makes this movie an interesting watch.

The performances are actually good. This was an early performance in Barbara Stanwyck's career and while she's good here as Megan, she got better in future movies with a great long-lasting run of movies and television. Nils Asther, as Yen is pretty wooden but I suspect it's the part he was playing. I will say that while he's not the most interesting guy, he does at least have some amount of depth. However, I felt it was a stretch to see what Megan finds desirable about him other than his being so exotic but maybe that's the point here. It also helps that her fiancee is sympathetic if uninteresting.

This is also one of the most artistic films Capra did before settling into his usual style which would, at least for a while, serve him well. There are interesting readings of this movie regarding Capra's mental makeup:  frustrated romance and suicidal ideas emerge here and did in at least one earlier Capra movie plus several future ones (Wonderful Life being a prime example of Capra's use of suicide in his movies). The book I'm reading about Capra also mentions that Capra had been having an affair with Stanwyck that had recently ended around the time this movie was made. The implication seems to be that Capra projected his own self into the character of Yen:  this thing between me and Megan/Stanwyck isn't going to be possible so I no longer have anything to live for. At least that's the idea. The film also has a lot of visual flair with a fairly dreary mood; much of the movie seems to take place on rainy nights.

So, an interesting movie that I'd tentatively recommend if you can look past the problematic issues and definitely worth seeking out for anyone interested in Capra's lesser known movies.