The Bitter Tea of General Yen
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Bitter Tea of General Yen |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1933 |
| length | 87 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Frank Capra |
| script | Edward E. Paramore Jr. |
| production | Walter Wanger for Columbia Pictures |
| music | William Franke Harling |
| camera | Joseph Walker |
| cut | Edward Curtiss |
| occupation | |
| |
The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a 1933 American film directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbara Stanwyck .
action
The American Megan Davis traveled to Shanghai in 1911 to marry the missionary Robert Strife and to support him in his work. In the turmoil of the Chinese Civil War , Megan is separated from her fiancé and falls into the hands of the warlord General Yen, who takes her to his palace.
There Megan gets to know the peculiarities of Chinese culture. When Yen sentenced his concubine Mah-Li to death for high treason, she sacrificed for their lives. Against his better judgment, Yen gives in to Megan's demand because he has fallen in love with her. Mah-Li's machinations eventually lead Yen's entire army to desert. Plagued by guilt, Megan goes to Yen to indulge himself, but the general has already taken his own life with a cup of poisoned tea.
background
The Bitter Tea of General Yen is based on the novel of the same name by Grace Zaring Stone, published in 1930. The role of the Chinese general Yen was taken over by Nils Asther . At that time it was common to cast Asian or black characters with white actors. Other candidates for the title role were Leo Carrillo , Leslie Banks and Chester Morris . Constance Cummings and Anna May Wong were in conversation as Megan and Mah-Li. Originally Herbert Brenon was supposed to direct.
Frank Capra later admitted he directed The Bitter Tea of General Yen primarily to win an Oscar . He believed that a drama had a better chance of winning the award than a comedy
The Bitter Tea of General Yen premiered on January 3, 1933. It was the first film to be shown in New York's newly opened Radio City Music Hall . The controversial love affair between a Chinese and an American woman provoked numerous protests and the film became a commercial failure.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen was the fourth of a total of five films that Barbara Stanwyck made under the direction of Frank Capra. The title of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant refers to the film.
criticism
- Lexicon of international films : A deliberately artistic melodrama with some idle time, but also some very intense scenes. Frank Capra dared to get a "hot potato" with the love between two people of different skin color: his film, which made the leading actress Barbara Stanwyck a star, was boycotted in England and several other countries.
- The New York Times : The Bitter Tea of General Yen is director Frank Capra's strangest, least distinctive, sound film.
swell
- ^ Richard Schickel: The Men Who Made The Movies. New York 1975, p. 70
Web links
- The Bitter Tea of General Yen in the Internet Movie Database (English)