THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN: MOD-Blu-ray (Columbia Pictures 1933) Sony Home Entertainment

During Hollywood’s golden age, ostensibly, there was only one way a studio could affirm its faith in a burgeoning director; give him an ‘A’ list project to helm with a lot of money, time, effort and star power thrown into the mix. Such was the case with Frank Capra, whose compendium of themes for the common man have never been surpassed, and, in whom Columbia Studios’ mogul, Harry Cohn had the utmost belief. Despite an initial fallow period, where Capra struggled to find work, once afforded the opportunity to do his best, he was never again to rest on his laurels, directing eighteen middling features for Columbia in just five short years, beginning with 1928’s silent, That Certain Thing. With each stride, Capra’s craftsmanship evolved, enough for Cohn to entrust him with 1933’s plush-mounted, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. It’s a curious picture to say the least– not simply for its pre-code miscegenation between western bride-to-be, Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck) and her far east Asian captor, the eponymous title character, rather crudely rendered by costar, Nils Asther; but also, given Capra’s predilection for telling stories usually driven by a male protagonist in a contemporary American setting.

Stanwyck’s sturdiness as the soap-scrubbed missionary, forced to grow up fast and face her own erotic attraction to this vial, yet curiously empathetic potentate, lends the tale its ballast as an important movie about male/female conflict, set against the backdrop of larger-than-life civil unrest. It’s the cloth from which director David Lean would later create his most memorable cinema classics. However, it’s not entirely Capra’s bag, and he reveals, intermittently, an inadequacy to get a genuine feel for any of these characters; latching onto Stanwyck’s screen magnetism as a means of realigning his own creative equilibrium and propel this fairly lumbering screenplay, cobbled together by Edward E. Paramore (from a story idea by Grace Zaring Stone, dripping in platitudes), from one maudlin plot device to the next.  A lot of movies today forget that their central focus is not to provide the audience with a ‘teachable moment’ but to entertain them by filling up their leisure. If a point is to be made, it ought to arise almost as an afterthought; the pill coated in sugar, not force-fed. The Bitter Tea of General Yen desperately wants to ‘explain’ too much of and about the social inequalities forever separating east from west. But the ‘message’ gets in the way of the entertainment. Yen is a man; Meg – a woman. Their cultural divide is based on a mutual contempt for one another’s moral character; her, brittle Victorianism/his, unabashed sensual-ness without incrimination.   

I adore Barbara Stanwyck – and not only for her screen characterizations; perhaps, even more for her monumentally kind heart and hallmarks of personal integrity she held to steadfast and exhibited towards all throughout her illustrious career. Few toiling in Hollywood were as philanthropic with their time and money; fewer still, as genuine and magnanimous in their desire to promote and see others succeed. Alas, Stanwyck’s screen persona is distinctly at odds with the perpetually tear-stained, occasionally blubbering and self-appointed keeper of the flame in this movie. Stanwyck’s best moments herein allow her to take a position against Yen’s autocratic authority; challenging his right to keep her a prisoner in his palace or incredulously imploring him to spare the life of his treasonous concubine, Mah-Li (Toshia Mori), suspected of an affair with Capt. Li (Richard Loo). Here, Stanwyck exudes a sort of tempered authority, exercising humility and compassion to melt away the General’s austere façade. It’s a Stanwyck tour de force and it all but rescues the picture from its platitude-stricken plot. Were that The Bitter Tea of General Yen had a male counterpoint equal to the task of sparring with Stanwyck’s Meg.

Today, the name Nils Anton Alfhild Asther has been all but forgotten; brushed aside in the Hollywood folklore, dominated by unicorns and legends of a more prominent ilk. But in his day, the Swedish-born actor achieved some notoriety for his stark handsomeness as ‘the male Garbo’. Despite appearing in over 70 movies, 16 made during the silent era, where he played opposite such luminescent female stars as Pola Negri, Marion Davies, Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, Asther was basically black-balled in Hollywood from 1935 to 1940 after an alleged breach of contract. It did not help matters he was also a closeted homosexual. Working in Britain during those years, Hollywood eventually ‘forgave’ him his breach, though never his homosexuality. Regrettably, his five year absence from American movies had irreversibly altered the potency of his box office drawing power and he quickly, and rather quietly, faded into obscurity; finding bit parts in films and later, television.  In hindsight, it’s easy to see why Asther never became a celebrated part of the legacy of Tinsel Town. His Swedish accent is oft cited for this; but actually it’s the theatricality of his screen presence that did him in. Heavily pancaked to conceal his European good looks, in The Bitter Tea of General Yen Asther is not only barely recognizable to his fans but as stiff as a petrified stick of kindling. He doesn’t emote or even react to Stanwyck so much as one can sense him pensively waiting for his next cue to speak. When he does it is with painfully elongated verbalization, oft punctuated by pregnant pauses that neither augment nor stimulate the conversation; merely, inserting dead air that Capra is powerless to fill – even with frequent cutaways to Stanwyck’s infinitely more convincing reaction shots.

Set in war-torn 1920’s Shanghai, The Bitter Tea of General Yen ought to have been a better picture. It reveals some great staging Capra would later finesse to far better effect in Lost Horizon (1936); his verve for tight shots of all-out chaos; terrified masses fleeing a fiery night of civil unrest; Capra’s contrast of this sheer panic juxtaposed with the laissez faire idiocy of character actress, Clara Blandick’s Mrs. Jackson; a flighty socialite who cannot conceive what all the fuss is about because she is too self-absorbed in preparations to give Megan the perfect wedding. Alas, it is not to be as Megan’s fiancé, the rather self-righteous Dr. Robert Strike (Gavin Gordon) places his missionary duties ahead of true love. Invested in the cause, mostly because she loves Bob, Meg darts off with her beloved to rescue some missionary orphans; placing herself in harm’s way as General Yen’s marauding forces and the rebels collide in the streets, forcing everyone to flee on foot. On the way, they make a pit stop at the plush headquarters of General Yen, whose authority derives from an over-ambitious American wheeler/dealer, Jones (Walter Connelly) liquidating storehouses to fund Yen’s revolutionary forces, distinctly loyal only to the gold sovereign of the realm.

Robert pleads with the General for a letter of safe conduct. Contemptuous of his missionary zeal, Yen instead provides him with a worthless paper that describes Bob's foolishness. Arriving at St. Andrews’ Misson, Megan and Robert are separated in the exodus of the city and she is knocked unconscious; never to see him again. Awakening some time later, Megan discovers she is aboard Gen. Yen’s private and fairly luxurious train, attended by his presumably devoted concubine, Mah-Li (Toshia Mori). Yen is infatuated with Megan from the outset. Indeed, they have already met once before when his chauffeur-driven car ran over her rickshaw boy during the city’s exodus. Then, she offered him her handkerchief to wipe his blood-spattered brow. He coolly refused it. But afterward, these shared impressions of one another have continued to linger. Now, as Yen’s ‘prisoner’, Megan is afforded a lavishly appointed suite of rooms in his palace overlooking the left bank where his firing squad daily executes suspected insurrectionists for their crimes against his heavily policed state. Yen makes several veiled advances to win Meg’s trust; virtually all of them turned down. Instead, Meg begins to suffer from a series of erotic dreams; her romantic loyalties chronically shifting from Robert to the General.

Meanwhile, Mah-Li is observed from Meg’s balcony, tossing slippers with hidden messages to Capt. Li. Naïve, and quite unaware of their significance, Meg is outraged to learn Yen’s discovery of Mah-Li’s ‘affair’ has resulted in his executive decision to put her to death. Mistaken in her loyalties, Megan begs for Mah-Li’s life and is eventually granted ‘custody’ of the girl, much to the perturbed Jones’ exacerbation. Jones has toiled night and day to raise six million dollars in support of Yen’s cause to rule over Shanghai.  Under the strictest of confidences, Jones informs Yen of the boxcar location of this formidable surplus.  As Mah-Li is under Megan’s custody, she begs to be taken to a nearby temple, presumably for daily prayer. Actually, the girl is using the temple as a prearranged meeting place where she can pass along information about Yen’s future plans to Capt. Li. Armed with the latest info Li and his rebels stages a daring nighttime ambush on Yen’s heavily guarded stockpile. Yen’s men are completely decimated and the money stolen to fund the other side. Alerted by Jones, miraculously to have survived, Yen is unmoved, even as Megan, realizing her complicity in the crime, confesses it to him. As Mah-Li has fled with Capt. Li into the night, Yen discovers he is quite alone in his palace; his guards and servants, having learned the news, all abandoned him now.

Yen prepares a poisonous concoction to drink; a bitter tea, as it were, to end his suffering. His surrender is as acrid to Megan who, after briefly considered her departure from the palace for good with Jones, suddenly makes a last ditch attempt to seduce her captor by transforming herself into his concubine. Discovering Yen in his throne room alone, she kneels before him, tends to his every comfort with a pillow and blanket, and begs his forgiveness. She loves him dearly. Recognizing love has come too late for them both, Yen quietly sips his lethal tea and dies while Meg whimpers at his side. Sometime later, Megan and Jones are seen on a clipper bound for Shanghai. Uncharacteristically whimsical, Jones asserts the tragedy of the General’s short life, comforting a solitary and silent Megan by suggesting she will be reunited with him in another life.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen holds the dubious honor of being the first motion picture to open at Radio City Music Hall. Alas, abysmal box office forced the theater to yank it from circulation after only eight days, against $80,000 in losses incurred from its initial two-week pre-booked engagement. In later years, Barbara Stanwyck would go on record to suggest the poor turnout was largely due to racist backlash; the British Board of Censors actually requiring harsh cuts before the picture could be shown abroad. Columbia shelved The Bitter Tea of General Yen after 1933. As remarkable as it may seem, even a planned reissue in 1950 was quashed when the Production Code Administration found certain characterizations ‘highly questionable’ and insisted the moment when Stanwyck offers herself to Yen as a concubine be stricken from the print.

To Harry Cohn’s credit, rather than butcher Capra’s hard achieved efforts, he merely canceled his plans for the re-release altogether. Even taking into account the varied points of interest; racial/sexual/political/cultural, etc. et al, The Bitter Tea of General Yen remains rather weakly second-tier Capra-corn; lavishly appointed, but slavishly mired in a sort of wordy, rather than worldly treatise that places the big ‘E’ of its entertainment value behind the many ‘messages’ it muddles through for the sake of heavy-handed in making its points.  Capra has done his best here, but the results do not live up to his blood, sweat and tears: nor even those less than affectingly shed by our heart-sore protagonist, Megan Davis. The rhetoric gets in the way of the pseudo-sexual/political affirmations. That the more puritanical American public of 1932 found the picture’s interracial sexual attraction off-putting is forgivable. But for a host of other reasons, The Bitter Tea of General Yen is forgettable at its worst, and marginally of cultural interest as merely a relic from another time, rather than a cultural touchstone for the ages.

There is no love for The Bitter Tea of General Yen on Blu-ray: gone straight to MOD-BRD via Sony’s ‘Choice Collection’. For a studio as proactive and progressive in their remastering efforts as Sony, I have to say instituting a burn-on-demand ‘archive’ in lieu of legitimately authored Blu-rays released as limited editions (a la the Warner Archive) is a real slapdash way to go. No menus. No extras and only a subtitle feature that intrudes at the beginning of the main title sequence. Not impressed. Not by a long shot. From a remastering perspective there is, of course, far better news. Sony has applied the same due diligence to the print master, utilizing the best possible archival sources. The results are mostly impressive with very minor caveats. The B&W image is remarkably sharp with virtually no apparent age-related damage. Contrast is satisfying on the whole with rich black levels and very pristine whites. 

As not everything has survived from original camera negatives, dupes have been inserted and bear the stigma of inconsistent contrast and a far thicker grain structure.  Joseph Walker’s cinematography gorgeously filtered through gauze to lend an air of exoticism, positively shimmers. Also, the last fifteen minutes suffer from some horrendous gate weave and sprocket damage. I cannot imagine there are no digital tools available today that would have at least tempered, if not eliminated these anomalies. But there it is. The 2.0 mono DTS audio, derived from originally flawed Westrex sound recordings has been adequately preserved and sounds fairly good with obvious shortcomings factored into the inherent limitations of its vintage. Again, NO extras. Bottom line: For Capra completionists, The Bitter Tea of General Yen will be of some interest. Sony’s Blu-ray incarnation is certainly of value. But going the quick n’ dirty route has cheapened the effect of this release.  Would it really have killed Sony to do the honorable ‘limited edition’, legitimately authored via Twilight Time instead? Hmmmm?

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

0