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The Bitter Tea of General Yen

United States

1933

88 Min
Black and White
1.37:1
French, Mandarin, English
  • Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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DIR Frank Capra

PROD Frank Capra

SCR Edward E. Paramore Jr., Grace Zaring Stone

DP Joseph Walker

CAST Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly, Gavin Gordon, Lucien Littlefield, Helen Jerome Eddy

ED Edward Curtiss

MUSIC W. Franke Harling

Synopsis

Banned in Britain! Director Capra’s exotic adventure drops missionary Stanwyck into a chaotic and brutal China, run by dueling warlords and competing Western interests. Evacuated from Shanghai and rescued by General Yen (Swedish silent star Nils Asther is magnetic on screen), Stanwyck finds her Western preconceptions and naive idealism challenged by Yen’s wit, and her defenses completely topple during one of the screen’s most erotically charged dream sequences. –AFI

Director

Original

Frank Capra

The most honored and well-liked director of his generation, Sicilian-born Frank Capra graduated from the California Institute of Technology as a Chemical Engineering major. Down on his luck after service during World War I, he bluffed his way into the movie business and learned films from the bottom up, from the film lab to the prop department to the editing department. He settled in as a gagman during the 1920s, and soon became a director specializing in comedy. After a stint with Mack Sennett, Capra moved to Columbia Pictures, where he came into his own as a filmmaker.

Displaying a good feel for drama as well as comedy, and a common touch with which ordinary viewers could resonate, Capra quickly became the star among the tiny studio’s stable of directors. His pictures, starting with American Madness in 1932, displayed themes that audiences regarded as important and uplifting during the worst days of the Great Depression, and Capra, despite the relatively modest budgets with… read more

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groaningbitch

13Feb12

seriously under-rated.

Elisa and ruby stevens like this

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Electrus Amadeus Magnus

31May11

I prefer Sayonara (1957), Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and The King and I (1956).

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Dave

29May11

It has to be the most overlooked and underrated film in Capra's entire body of work. It seems to be completely forgotten but it is the near top of my list of Capra favorites. Great storytelling and the film has a great look.

Elisa likes this

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Andre

18Dec10

"There isn’t a General Yen or Megan Davis, but just you and me." The most complex movie of Capra and a magnificent film that is flying under the radar. Starts as american idealism against chinese pragmatism (“This fool prefers civil war to the loving arms of his bride.”) but develops into a love-in- spite-of-prejudice story that is hard to forget.

groaningbitch and 3 others like this

TheArshMan, H. K. ‡, Elisa

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Also: Ruiz in Berkeley, the EU in Chicago and listening to Nina Menkes and Slavoj Žižek.

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Reviews

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Capra sans corn

By Musycks on April 16, 2012

Bitter Tea Of General Yen represents a visual high water mark for Frank Capra and his cinematographer Joseph Walker. The exotic Chinese setting means they were able to shoot in the style of Josef Von…  read review

male cleopatra

By groanin​gbitch on February 13, 2012

due to the archaic yellow-face casting og nil astor as general yen, this movie has been inappropriately tagged as ideologically incorrect. yes, it is, in some way, for example, in conversation like…  read review

Yellowface

By ruby stevens on May 19, 2011

capra’s most daring film was a box office disaster in 1933. it was denounced by women’s groups and religious organizations in america and banned in the british empire for obliquely portraying an interracial…  read review

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