The Bitter Tea of General Yen

A five star film by any other name, Frank Capra's 1933 masterpiece explores it's major themes as thoroughly and proficiently as any film. The two central performances, Barbara Stanwyck as naive missionary Megan and Mils Asther as General Yen, crackle with possibilities and are delightfully absent of dischord. It is all to easy for the American missionary abroad in 1930's American cinema to become cloy or twee but plot and the skill of the actress mean these pitfalls are neatly sidestepped. Yen, as unsypathetic a character as American cinema of this era could hope to support, somehow claws back the veiwer's sympathies by the same tokens of narrative and delivery which protect Stanwyck/Megan, his spectacular and curtly portrayed fall from grace somehow a cause for sorrow.

Even modern cinema, appealing to a much more sophisticated audience's understanding of moral relativism could do no more.

Unfortunately, one of the film's most central themes, its portrayal of casual racism and its consequences, is badly undermined by the racism endemic in the picture. This is more than the 21st century viewer projecting his or her own morality onto the picture, it's a legitimate bugbear - how can the preachy nature of this central tenant be taken seriously when every single Chinese character portrayed in the film is either a liar, a wh*re, a murderer, a thug, or a midnless automaton.

A flawed masterpiece

The sexual tension in this film is amazing. It crackles off the screen - surprising for such an old film. I was expecting to cringe at the sight of a Western actor made up to look Chinese, but the Swedish actor (Nils Asther) who played the role was so charismatic that I was totally gripped. The film has an intelligent script, it doesn't shy away from the brutality of war, and the message of cultural understanding in it wouldn't be out of place today. This film will be in my mind for a long time.

Are you're boots laced?

This black and white film is surprising concidering the year it was made. It has violence and sex of a level almost unheard of in movies made at this time. Dispite its very all white cast(not a real chinaman in sight), give it time and i would watch it again in a couple of years when there is nothing else on the box.