Excellent but underrated film

Crappy film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Barbara Stanwyck and Nils Asther star in "The Bitter Tea of General Yen," a 1933 film also starring Walter Connelly and Toshia Mori.Stanwyck plays missionary Megan Davis who comes to China during their civil war in order to marry another missionary, Dr. Strike (Gavin Gordon). Before they can be married, they have to save orphans left in an orphanage some distance from Snanghai. While there, the couple get separated, and Megan ends up a guest of a General Yen, whom she had actually met earlier. She also meets his mistress, Mah-Li (Mori), with whom she becomes close. General Yen is attracted to Megan, and she to him -- both attracted and repelled -- and when Mah-Li is accused of selling secrets to the enemy, Megan begs that her life be spared.This is such an unusual film for Frank Capra, and such an unusual film, period. It was banned in England because of miscegenation, even though the main characters are actually played by white people, Nils Asther being Swedish. This is precode, and the Hayes code really clamped down in the U.S. Anna May Wong was problematic casting for The Good Earth and Dragon Seed, and therefore wasn't cast, because she could not appear opposite a white man. Featuring an interracial couple, even if they were playing the same race, likely would mean the movie would be rejected by many theater chains in regions in which anti-Asian prejudice was particularly severe. The new Motion Picture Production Code of 1934, pandering to segregationists, forbade filmmakers from portraying miscegenation in a positive light. Casting a Chinese-American opposite a Caucasian might be construed as promoting miscegenation.The film is very atmospheric, sexually charged, and beautifully acted by the leads. It was particularly a tour de force for Asther, though his career eventually fizzled. Walter Connelly plays a different kind of character, a tough American siding with General Yen.Well worth seeing for its place in history as well as for Stanwyck and Asther.

It was directed by Frank Capra and stars Barbara Stanwyck in her pretty, vulnerable youth, but it comes out as a sluggish and uninspired romantic melodrama.Stanwyck is a missionary who is waylaid and sequestered in Shanghai by the local warlord, Nils Asther, in the most grotesque Oriental make up known to man or beast. He courts her with presents and poetry, but Stanwyck has seen him execute some prisoners of a rival warlord and, although she's attracted by his courtly manners, she's repelled by the brutality he tells her is necessary to the safety of his province.The decor is echt-Hollywood. So are the costumes, which are about one hundred years out of date. The plot is only half that age.In 1932, China was in fact ruled by warlords but they'd been organized into two rival armies -- the Nationalists under Chang Kai Shek and the Communists under Mao Tse Tung. The Communists had been largely driven out and taken refuge in a northern province. The two armies were later to loosely reunite to fight Japanese incursions before returning to the fighting that had been suspended. Chang lost.Stanwyck should have been able to contact her Consulate one way or another. Shanghai, like Hong Kong, was a European enclave and a sophisticated port city. It is gradually reverting to type.But none of that has to do with the story, which has to do with love, greed, power, and treachery. Richard Loo appears as Captain Li, the palace tattle-tale. Buffs will recognize him as the sneaky enemy in various movies about World War II and Korea. He can't make up for Nils Asther.It's probably Capra's most innovative movie as far as technique is concerned. There is a weird dream sequence in which Asther batters his way into her locked room and is about to ravish her with his inch-long fingernails, about as attractive a prospect has being ravished by the aged Howard Hughes with HIS Mandarin fingernails. Freud said that all dreams were a form of wish fulfillment. If that's true, Stanwyck is pretty perverse, especially for a missionary.

I didn't actually know it was from director Frank Capra (It's a Wonderful Life) till I actually started watching it, it featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, that is why I watched. Set during the Chinese Civil War, American missionary Megan Davis (Double Indemnity's Barbara Stanwyck) arrives in Shanghai to marry Dr. Robert 'Bob' Strike (Gavin Gordon), but they postpone the wedding to rescue orphans from an orphanage burning in the battlefield. The group are separated in the chaos, and Megan faints, waking in the palace of the man who saved/kidnapped her, warlord General Yen (Nils Asther). The General's mistress Mah-Li (Toshia Mori) gets close to Megan, and he accuses her of betraying him, giving enemies classified information. He falls for Megan, and does spare Mah-Li's life, which doesn't make his financial adviser Jones (Walter Connolly) very happy. Megan does slowly start to fall for the cruel, powerful and gentle General, but Mah-Li did in fact betray him and has destroyed his empire, and Megan watches him kill himself with his last (poisoned) bitter tea. Also starring Lucien Littlefield as Mr. Jacobson, Richard Loo as Captain Li, Clara Blandick as Mrs. Jackson, Moy Ming as Dr. Lin, Robert Wayne as Reverend Bostwick, Knute Erickson as Dr. Hansen, Ella Hall as Mrs. Amelia Hansen, Arthur Millett as Mr. Pettis, Helen Jerome Eddy as Miss Reed and Martha Mattox as Miss Avery. Stanwyck does very well as the lead female character, and Swedish actor Asther is superbly subtle as the nasty General, and there are some eye-catching moments, such as the battle sequences, so it is an impressive classic drama. Very good!

Definitely the most "Un-Capra" film that the director ever made. It's a shame he never did anything near as good or interesting after, because "Yen" is pretty amazing. A young Barbara Stanwyck is the fiancé of an American missionary who is rescued from Chinese Civil War violence by the notorious warlord General Yen (Nils Asther, extraordinary). He takes her back to his huge palace, and soon Stanwyck realizes he does not wish for her ever to leave. She finds herself being drawn to the mysterious Yen against her will, a man who is both shocking in his cold cruelness (ordering the execution of men in his palace grounds)and yet fascinating in his cultured, seductive manner. The film is best known for being a remarkable Pre-code attempt at showing a "forbidden" romance between an Eastern man and a Western woman, but it has many other subtle layers too. Yen seems to be playing power games with Megan, encounters that become increasingly charged as the film progresses. Megan's ingrained Christian attitudes and her Western beliefs are constantly challenged by Yen. The most talked-about scene in the film is, of course, the remarkable dream sequence where Megan's sub-conscious attraction to Yen is obvious. It's an incredibly sensual scene, and film. The atmosphere created by Capra and photographer Joseph Walker is astonishing, and frame after frame is beautiful. Nils Asther's performance is remarkable, and he inhabits his role so completely that we almost forget he is a Swede merely playing at being Chinese.