By Marilyn Ferdinand
If I had to make a list of the most subversive love stories ever committed to film, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, would certainly be near the top. The interracial romance at the heart of the film was taboo in 1933, and remained so for many decades. But more subversive was the look at the love of money and destabilizing love of a Christian God missionaries spread throughout the world. This type of story is something of a surprise from Hollywood’s most successful idealizer of American values, Sicilian immigrant Frank Capra, and his female star, Barbara Stanwyck. Only two years earlier, the two had teamed to film The Miracle Woman, in which Stanwyck played a bitter and cynical evangelist whose faith in God is restored. In The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Capra and Stanwyck reversed this outcome, as a Chinese warlord “converts a missionary,” forcing her to see the charade of her blind loyalty to her missionary fiancé and her Christian mission, and acknowledge the attraction that has grown between them.
The film opens with the Chinese populace in Shanghai running in chaos to signal the civil war embroiling the country. In a well-appointed home, Western missionaries and expatriates are preparing for the wedding of Dr. Bob Strike (Gavin Gordon) and Megan Davis (Stanwyck), the latter of whom is coming from her upper-crust New England home to work side by side with her soon-to-be husband as a missionary.
In the muddy streets, Bob and Megan are making their way to the house in separate rickshaws. Megan’s rickshaw gets stuck in the mud, and before her driver can get it unstuck, he is mowed down by a large car driven by General Yen (Nils Ashter). Megan pleads with Yen to help the driver, but he is wondering why she would care about a stranger. She sees his head is bleeding and offers him her handkerchief. He demurs, pulling one of his own from his sleeve. They both cast a long gaze at each other as they go their separate ways.
When Bob and Megan reach the site of their wedding, Megan readies herself for the ceremony. Unfortunately, Bob has received word that a mission orphanage is in danger, and he must appeal to Yen to write him a safe-conduct pass. The assembled well-wishers are abuzz with the evils of General Yen, a crook who has amassed a fortune for his renegade army, and believe Bob will get nowhere with Yen. Nonetheless, with Megan insisting on accompanying him, Bob gets a note from Yen, which actually says that “This fool prefers orphans to the arms of his bride,” a joke only the Chinese who can read it can appreciate. Finding most of the orphanage already evacuated, Bob and Megan attempt to move the final group of six orphans and their nurse to safety. They duck machine gun fire that mows down an entire group of Chinese, but are nonetheless confronted by soldiers. Megan is hit on the head and loses consciousness, only to awaken in a beautifully appointed bedroom in what turns out to be General Yen’s summer palace where Mah-Li (Toshia Mori), Yen’s concubine, tends to her wounds. Yen has saved her, but what he intends to do with her is anyone’s guess.
Capra sets up situations in this film that he would plumb again in Lost Horizon (1937), in many ways, the reverse image of Bitter Tea. The opening scene of chaos is repeated at the beginning of Lost Horizon, and a kidnapping of the main character occurs. He also sets the second act of each picture in an exotic and isolated Asian locale, the better to remove his protagonists from the overweaning influence of their own Western enclaves. In both films, he critiques the base Western concerns that place a narrow morality and profit above all else. In the later film, George Conway (John Howard), the brother of idealist Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), considers himself a prisoner in the idyllic Shangri-La and spends most of his time planning to escape. In Bitter Tea, Megan is a prisoner who keeps demanding to be returned to Shanghai; her only contact with Western culture is American war profiteer Jones (Walter Connolly), whose sole interest in Yen and China is to enrich himself.
Where The Bitter Tea of General Yen parts company with Lost Horizon is in its smoldering, complex love story of mutual dislike and attraction. Megan strikes the first blow when she calls Yen a “yellow swine,” which visibly shakes him and shames Megan into realizing that she is full of prejudice against the people she came to China to help. Yen’s courtesy and refinement impress her, but she finds his barbarism incongruous. When she awakens one morning to the horror of prisoners being executed by a firing squad, she complains to Yen. His response is to send the firing squad down the road out of earshot, and excuses the executions as a kindness in comparison with the slow starvation they would suffer in his jail cells because he cannot afford to feed them all. “We are in the middle of a civil war,” he says, emphasizing in the most understated way the naivété of the missionaries who bring to the Chinese struggling for freedom “words, nothing but words.”
Ashter, made up with barely passable Asian features, towers over the diminutive Stanwyck, yet he never offers the menace she expects. He is highly insulted by her accusation that he meant to rape her, saying he only wants what is freely offered to him. Again, Megan’s prejudices are undercut—she is dealing with a man, not an ignorant heathen, from a civilization much more ancient than her Christian America and extending much earlier than the Christ era. Stanwyck is great at conveying a character who is far out of her depth, ignorant of her new surroundings and all they encompass, and weak even when asserting her strongest convictions. Her rebellion against Yen’s dinner invitations are paltry and her impassioned assurance that acts of mercy will bring Yen the greatest feeling in the world sounds desperate and hollow. Death is something she shrinks from, and Yen accurately chides her with “You are as afraid of death as you are of life.”
Capra builds a dreamy, romantic setting full of sparkling jewels, cherry-blossom moons, caressing costumes, and candle-kissed lighting. Stanwyck glows, her unusual beauty enhanced by Capra’s flattering, soft-focus close-ups, her tears like diamonds on her cheeks. Yen’s palace is enchanted, with simple acts like stirring a teacup handled with a painstaking decorum and touch. It is this atmosphere that seduces Megan and wraps the audience in a love-struck spell.
Megan observes young lovers courting on the picturesque grounds of the palace in scenes that are handled with a delicacy that reminded me of Lotte Reiniger’s fragile paper cutouts in The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Their laughter and embraces form a mirror to the experiences Megan hoped to have with Bob and that now seem to be transmuting. The eroticism of Yen and his environment, a veritable hothouse of the entwined vines of sex and death so similar to the overwhelming sexual swoon that is India in Powell and Pressburger’s masterpiece Black Narcissus (1947), shake Megan from her moral moorings. She dreams of Yen, first as the stereotypical Yellow Devil menacing her with his long, phallic fingernails, and then as her masked savior. In her dream, she welcomes him into her arms and most probably to her bed, though the camera discreetly demurs to her awakening. She doesn’t seem appalled at what her mind has concocted, truly marking this film as a product of Pre-Code Hollywood.
Megan’s misguided trust in a duplicitous Mah-Li, whom she saves from execution, ends up ruining Yen. He confronts her with his anger, but unexpectedly says that he intended to kill her, as he was entitled to do by her pledge to vouch for Mah-Li, and then join her forever in the land of their ancestors, a tormented confession of love that both confuses and thrills Megan. Ashter’s ardor is a sudden burst from a fairly controlled man, though Megan says at one point that “The subtlety of you Orientals is very much overestimated.” I found it so touching that when she finally acquiesces to her feelings, coming to Yen’s side in an Asian dress she refused to wear before, crying over her guilt in helpless surrender, he wipes her tears with his silk handkerchief: “The Chinese gave the world silk.” With these words that show the soft tenderness of his love, Yen drinks the poisoned tea he brewed so meticulously for his suicide and quietly dies, the fulfillment of his love for Megan his gift for the afterlife.
Capra includes an interesting postscript in which a drunken Jones plays amateur fortune teller for a quiet Megan as they sail for Shanghai. He can’t seem to decide whether Megan will go through with the life she planned before falling under Yen’s influence or give it up. Megan, with a self-knowledge incited by her brief romance—some might call it tragic, but to me it formed a perfect whole, a love transcending race, culture, and time—simply gazes with limpid eyes and a rueful smile as the film draws to a close.
Capra builds a dreamy, romantic setting full of sparkling jewels, cherry-blossom moons, caressing costumes, and candle-kissed lighting. Stanwyck glows, her unusual beauty enhanced by Capra’s flattering, soft-focus close-ups, her tears like diamonds on her cheeks. Yen’s palace is enchanted, with simple acts like stirring a teacup handled with a painstaking decorum and touch. It is this atmosphere that seduces Megan and wraps the audience in a love-struck spell.
This magnificent paragraph of descriptive prose is my favorite passage of what is clearly a master class presentation, without any question one of the very finest reviews we have yet seen in this countdown. Of course I am hardly surprised. Yes this is absolutely a subversive romantic masterpiece from the anything-goes pre-code era – qualifying in a category that has over the years embraced such diverse vehicles like Barbara Stanwyck’s BABY FACE and the 1987 DIRTY DANCING. I was riveted by your superlative points of comparison of this classic pre-coder with the later 1937 LOST HORIZON that documented the comparative opening chaos, the exotic Asian locale and the Western interests that were mutually regaled. Of course, as you note, there is an eventual parting of narrative and thematic concerns, and this manifests itself in the ironic love story, one where Megan frames her lover with some startling racial slurs.
The cinematic references to both THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED and BLACK NARCISSUS are brilliantly posed and the wrenching finale is recalled with poetic eloquence.
In a career of so many cinematic landmarks, THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN remains of Capra’s finest hours.
Hi Sam – Every time I see this film, it takes my breath away. How masterfully Capra handles this soft/hard tale, how unsentimentally he approaches sentiment, how honestly does he depict sexual desire. It’s really one of his very finest films, if not the best. It deserves a wider audience.
A lovely summation of one of the great erotic romances .The interplay of the lead players even after some eighty years has an intensity of sexual and sensual charge rarely matched since and a bonus for me of featuring one of the earliest great performances of my all-time favourite American actresses the magnificent Barbara Stanwyck who I hope and believe will feature in a good many more entries in this poll .
Great comment Mark! Things are certainly good for the encore you hanker for! 🙂
It is indeed a timeless film, and I do believe your hope will be fulfilled, Mark. Thanks for commenting.
Thank you for a wonderful review. I have only seen this film once and was a bit mystified by it as I was expecting typical Hollywood fare from the 1930’s. I have since learned the difference between pre-Code and post-Code productions of that time, and want to see this film again in proper perspective. Besides, Miss Stanwyck is one of my favorite actresses.
Thanks, Ann. Stanwyck is one of the greatest actresses Hollywood ever produced.
What a splendid essay!
Why thank you!
Poetic, seductive and haunting. And with an unforgettable ending. Capra went on to some great things, but hard to imagine this won’t be remembered as long as film is relevant. Great review!
Thanks, Frank, and I hope the film finds an appreciative new audience. It was not a hit in its own time.
A splendid essay, Marilyn, beautifully evocative of the film while, at the same time, deftly considering its historical and social significance.
Thanks very much, Duane.
Marilyn,
I’ve not been a fan of this film, but your essay intrigues me to view it again. I must admit it’s been many years since I viewed it so can’t offer a well thought out viewpoint on it. It does remind me of another film that we may or may not see on this countdown, which is Broken Blossoms. I know the two have many more differences than similarities, but the concept of the two lovers from opposite sides of the world is the key element….providing mystery and intrigue and danger among other things. Well written piece.
Jon, thanks for the compliment, and I hope you will keep the review in mind should you see it again. I really don’t see this film as anything like Broken Blossoms. While certainly that silent film illustrated love, it was not erotic. It was between a man and a girl, more brother and sister, though the man might have entertained some romantic feelings. The atmosphere was full of pathos, not charged with sexuality.
Yeah and that’s what I meant about there being more differences than similarities. I meant more along the racial lines than the content of the love.
Thanks. Pleased to have found you here. An entrancing film well reviewed. Regards from Thom at the immortal jukebox (drop a nickel).
Thanks for stopping in Thom. Marilyn’s review is surely one of the very best of this countdown so far. And a most fascinating subject for sure. Will check out your place today my friend.
Thanks, Thom. Much obliged.
The film bleeds with atmosphere. The imagery casts a hypnotic take. The stars give legendary performances.
Superb review! One of the best so far.
Thanks, Peter. You’re so right about the atmosphere, so dreamlike.
Marilyn, you are to be complimented for weaving effectively descriptive passages with keen analysis of this fine film — one that I’ve seen only once. My foggy memory recalls only that I was very impressed by it but your excellent writing quickly reminded me of the experience of seeing it.
My regret about this film is that unfortunate casting of a European in an Asian role, but of course such a departure from practices of the time would be unheard of. That said, the film very effectively depicts a world in which a dominant (Western) culture is seen to be inferior in so many ways to the exotic unknown of the “other.” How this is worked into the story renders this film a must-see for those who clinging to a “We’re Number 1!” mentality.
Thanks again!
Thank you, Pierre. I agree that it would have been preferable to have an Asian Yen – thankfully, other speaking parts for Asians went to Asians. Given the romantic angle, however, it would have been impossible to make this film that wouldn’t enflame the racism of the time. Sadly, the introduction to Capra’s Lost Horizon was reedited once we were at war with Japan to turn it into a jingoistic denunciation of the Yellow Peril – the complete opposite of the film’s message.
This is an excellent review, but I never saw the film. Stanwyck of course is a screen legend as is the director Frank Capra. I’ll get to it.
Thanks, Celeste. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.
Marilyn, a great review of this great Capra Pre-Code, which has me wanting to watch it again – I’ve only seen it once and am sure it needs repeated viewings. I’m intrigued by your point about the film journeying in the opposite direction to ‘The Miracle Woman’ in terms of the religious content. I do remember that Stanwyck is wonderful in this, as she always is.