Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Tad Pole . . . says Megan Davis, some sort of United Nations High Commissioner, about 59 minutes, 20 seconds into THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN. Her assistant, Mr. Jones, has just pegged China's 1932 population at about 500 million people. No rat census figures are provided here, perhaps because THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN depicts a densely disordered den of disastrously deplorable, devious, and depraved denizens posing a ticking time bomb challenge to Western Civilization and Human Culture, aka Humanity. Though Columbia Pictures tried to warn our USA Homeland of the Chinese Menace at a Historic Juncture when the problem could have been handled by a few thousand kegs of "BITTER TEA" (think the Kool-Aid vats at Jonestown), a series of Weak Presidents have allowed this Cess Pool to Fester. Breeding like rabbits, China's burgeoning head count is now A BILLION AND A HALF (again, that's just the Homo Sapiens, NOT the rodents!). No country should be permitted to have more people than our USA. This is only common sense. We cannot and MUST NOT allow ourselves to become outnumbered! (Even Gen. Yen thought he was having the last laugh, with American Megan clearly unaware of this First Principle of Military Defense.) Now, as Rocket "Man" Kim--China's rocking horsey stocking horse boy--threatens us daily, it's highly gratifying to know that we can rely upon Leader Trump to deal appropriately with the Chinese Peril ONCE AND FOR ALL. There's not enough Bitter Tea left in China to do the trick, but Leader Trump has bunkers full of nukes, and his fingers are hovering over The Button as I type!

jjnxn-1 Obviously a pre-code film since the subject of attraction between a white woman and an Asian man would be a taboo one for many years once the production code went into effect just after this film was released. Capra creates a mood piece with some compelling and strange imagery helped greatly by the excellent performances of the stars. The film is driven by Barbara Stanwyck, Capra's favorite leading lady and here it is easy to see why, she always delivered intense real work. Nils Asther is all but forgotten today but he really registers with a multifaceted performance. Considering the times in which it was made there may be portrayals which jar a modern viewer but if you are willing to take that into account this is quite an unusual picture.

sol ***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.

writers_reign Though it dates from 1933 both director Capra and actress Stanwyck were veterans of the movies and had indeed already worked together notably on Miracle Woman, a thinly-veiled take on Aimee Semple MacPherson. This time the canvas is broader embracing racism, politics and miscegenation just for starters. Swedish Nils Asther was convincing as the eponymous Chinese warlord who more or less kidnaps Stanwyck who has ostensibly journeyed to China to marry her missionary fiancé. Much has been made of the erotic dream sequence which gives Stanwyck an opportunity to confront her sexual confusion - attraction/repulsion - regarding Yen. For the time the setting was remarkably authentic and we have to score it as a little-known/seen gem.