Frank Capra made an artistic masterpiece in The Bitter Tea of General Yen, but it didn't make money. So a year later, with Columbia near bankruptcy, Capra made a smash hit, It Happened One Night and saved the studio. So Capra makes more hits, and some reviewers here act like he sold out. I wonder which films they saw?Actually, Bitter Tea foreshadows themes that we will see in most of Capra's films: the powerful vs. the powerless, money and how it corrupts, idealism and the obstacles to its realization. Capra was ahead of his time with many of his movies, often outraging the establishment. This was obvious in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but also in Meet John Doe, which features a remarkably Rupert Murdoch-like villain, and The State of the Union, which was 20 years ahead of The Candidate.Bitter Tea must also have been outrageously ahead of its time, offending Christians and Americans, not to mention Chinese. The cinematography by Joseph Walker is unusually beautiful and polished for 1933. But as he would work on most of Capra's movies, this does not make Bitter Tea exceptional, beyond that the print may have been better preserved than some. I find it strange that some would call this movie dated. The setting of 1930s civil war China is dated, but not the movie. I could imagine this movie remade by Steven Spielberg today with modern equipment, and he wouldn't need to change much.But what is so remarkable about Bitter Tea is the literary richness of the story. What we have here is the ideas of Nicolo Machiavelli in movie form. It is the story of the prince, who has power and ideals, but must also be prepared to wield naked power to achieve his goals. And it is the story of the naive unarmed prophet, who has ideals but no power, and no understanding of the worldly mechanisms for achieving those ideals. Those who have read and understood Machiavelli will understand this film.This is a must see film for fans of Frank Capra (I've seen 11 of his films). If you get this far, you might want to read Capra's autobiography, where he talks about the film. Spoiler alert:The result is that the naive missionary unintentionally wrecks the plans of the general, whom she learns too late might have accomplished great things.I love the ending. The Christian missionary vows she will never leave General Yen's side for the rest of his life. He promptly drinks poison. The ending, a suicide, was surely one reason this film wasn't the box office success Capra hoped for. I've seen many smart aleck critics say John Doe should have jumped on Christmas, and I've tried to imagine how this would have made Meet John Doe a better movie. Capra had already tried the suicide ending, and it was the right ending for Bitter Tea. But it would have been the wrong ending for Meet John Doe.

***SPOILERS*** Forbidden and eventually tragic love affair between the beautiful American missionary Magen Davis, Barbara Stanwych, and the brutal bandit General Yen, Nils Asther, that wasn't meant, according to the popular opinions of that time, to be yet still against all odds happened!Magen going to war-torn China to work with her fiancée Dr. Robert "Bob"Strike, Gavin Gordon, in Shanghai is separated from him during a pitched gun battle between General Yen's man and those rebel forces out to get him. Finding herself in General Yen's magnificent summer palace Magen is shocked to find out that the General is having around the clock executions of the enemy prisoner that his men had captured. This the General tells Magen is because it's better for them, those gunned down, to be shot then starve to death because of lack of rice or food supplies in the province that he's the Lord and Master of.In no time at all the General makes a play for Magen only to have her reject him because of his non-Christian values. Not taking no for an answer the General keeps on pushing in order to get Magen to be his woman even though her values are the exact opposite of his. It's when the General has his unfaithful concubine the beautiful Mah-Li, Toshia Morti, slated to be executed for treason that Magen reluctantly gives into his demands and offers herself up as insurance to keep Mah-Li from being shot at sunrise. It's in fact the very ungrateful Mah-Li who together with her boyfriend the General's right-hand man Captain Li, Richard Loo, who gets the very naive Magen to send important information to the General's enemies in where he's been keeping the money, 6 million in gold coins, to pay off his men. This leads to the Chinese rebels to attack the General's secret money train and run off with the cash that leads all his solders to desert him and leave him open to a major rebel assault on his summer palace!***SPOILERS*** With nowhere to go and even his most faithful servants deserting him the General finally sees the light in what Magen had been trying to open his eyes to the entire time she was with him in is palace! That being the low life and murderous swine that he is doesn't make people like him at all. In fact it will make them turn on him the first chance that they get and send him back to join his ancestors in the other world! With a very Chistian and forgiving Magen now finally at his side, when everyone else deserted him, the General does the only right and proper thing left to him to do. The now seeing the light General checks out for good with a sip, that's all it took, of the witches brew that he cooked up for himself! As for Magen she together with the General's American financial adviser Jones, Walter Connolly, sails back to the safety of the European colony of Shanghai knowing that the General is in a far better place, by repenting his sins, then what was is store for him if his enemies ever got a hold of him!P.S The film "The Bitter Tea of General Yen" was the very first film to be premiered at the then brand new and spacious Radio City Msic Hall back in January 1933. It also made a lot of people unhappy especially Orientals in how it directed Chinese values in that life was the cheapest thing in that country. It also outraged many Americans and Europeans in having an interracial affair between an uncivilized Oriental tyrant and white Christian woman which had the film put on the shelf, shortly after its release to the public, for more then 50 years. It wasn't until the 1980's that it was finally made available to the public on video tape, with some scenes cut out, when its message was no longer all that controversial.

A year before his major breakthrough film It Happened One Night director Frank Capra made this romantic tragedy that is filled with provocative topic and outstanding set design sensually photographed by master cinematographer Joseph Walker.Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck) arrives in China in the middle of a civil war to marry her missionary husband Dr. Robert Strike and then work alongside him. Before they even marry they are separated during an evacuation and Davis finds herself in the hands of warlord General Yen (Nils Asther) . Yen at first mocks Davis but soon finds himself falling heavily for her.The Bitter Tea of General Yen is filled with characters making bad decisions. Davis and Strike are nearly killed due to their naive condescension and trusting Megan is betrayed twice by her maid with huge consequence. General Yen cold and cruel as he may be also succumbs in his case to incurable romanticism. Only Jones (Walter Connolly) the arms dealer is grounded in reality to the dire situation that faces them.Director Capra ably provides scenes of both chaos ( refugee evacuations, night battles ) and tranquility in the idyllic setting of Yen's compound palace where the General sets about seducing Megan with delicate charm while firing squads outside in the courtyard dispatch his enemy. Capra also finds time to get some satiric shots in at Western superiority and hypocrisy but it is the sexual tension between the leads that is at the center of Yen.Megan's ambiguity is excellently conveyed by Stanwyck's actions and immature responses to the different world she finds herself. She's totally out of her element and her western ways are constantly checkmated by Yen. As Yen, Nils Asther cuts a dashing figure as the highly cultured warlord. He's cruel by occupation but sensitive in nature, especially around women as Jones informs us and it ultimately brings about his ruin. His scenes with Stanwyck resonate with cultural clash and erotic implication and Capra ups the ante even further with a Freudian dream that Megan has. Capra went on to make more famous and bigger films but he would never approach the eroticism or cynicism that this provocative thirties work offered causing me to wonder if success took some of the edge out of him..

Frank Capra made a sort of "little" film in 1933, little in that it starred then up-and-coming Barbara Stanwyck (the future iconic star of Double Indemnity and The Furies had only been in a few films before) and that it dealt with a topic that was very touchy to attempt for in 1933; only Griffith before had tried to deal with some kind of interracial bonding and/or sexual tension between white and Chinese people on screen, at least to my knowledge. What ended up working in favor for Capra with his story, and what makes it still work today still despite the creaky bits of racist dialog (i.e. "China-man" is repeated throughout by the supposedly tolerant missionary Megan Davis), is the script. This has excellent dialog and a potent message about trying to make a difference, to make some sort of change where things are, perhaps in simplification (hey, it's Capra), about the same as they've been for 2,000 years.It's a message that infers some tendencies to prejudices on both sides, of the white well-educated woman who sees to do good wherever she can and the stalwart General who will try to impress and act cordial around the lady but mostly because he wants to have his way- which may be with her. The story itself sounds kind of typical, probably because by today's standards it is: Megan Davis has just come to China to do missionary work but is caught in the midst of a bad civil war going on, and after a tumultuous battle she gets caught up in in the streets and is knocked out is taken into the 'care' of General Yen (Nils Asther, no, not Chinese apparently but does so good a job as to not notice *too* much). She cannot leave his custody at his palace because of the battling blocking up the train tracks, and has to stick tight... in the span of a week she tries to spare a life of a spy and almost falls for Yen, or maybe more than almost.It's actually the one complicated and really exacting thing in this production is seeing Asther and Stanwyck on screen. I'm not sure if the latter gave quite a great performance, but for what she's given she elevates it into a stern-faced but kind-hearted portrayal of a woman caught in an untenable situation, and Asther gives as good as he can by bypassing the obvious pit-fall of stereotyping by making Yen a very human figure. He's a man of class and taste but also tradition and with that typical double-edged sword of being ruthless with slaughter and elegant in decorum and in attitude. Somehow Capra is able to garner very good work from them with a story that, in the wrong hands, could become the most ham-fisted thing on the planet.Luckily not only is Capra uncompromising in dealing with the issues at hand both upfront and underlying in terms of race and ethnicity and just the clashing of cultures, but in technical terms with the bits of battle scenes (the shoot-out late in the film at the train station is breathtaking for 1933 and pretty good for today), and it shows a director so confident in his craft that he could be ready for better things. It might be dated... actually, it is dated. But for any and all faults, it's a picture made with surprising sensitivity and compassion for all its characters, and it doesn't stick to clichés just for the sake of it - it's a solid drama without much pretension, save for a dream sequence that's actually hallucinatory in the best way.