The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

 Frank Capra’s “The Bitter Tea of General Yen”

Thematic Elements: 

Frank Capra’s ‘The Bitter Tea of General Yen’ plays out like Beauty and the Beast – a villainous monster keeps a beauty locked up, offering her to join him for dinner every night, every night her refusing, until eventually she joins him and as time goes on, she begins to see past the negative aspects she reactionarily saw in him before and beings to see him as a human being, while she begins to question her own judgements. At the beginning of the film, the American Christian missionaries look down on the Chinese and the Chinese ways of living, as they believe that the Chinese are morally corrupt – Dr. Strike even suggesting that “human life is the cheapest thing in China.” However, as Megan begins to know and become more acquainted with General Yen, she begins to see the decisions he makes as being far more rational and perhaps even kinder than she originally expected. She even begins to question her own morality in the face of her Christian ideology as well. Upon seeing men being killed by the firing squad without trial, she confronts Yen who tells her that they have no food to feed the prisoners and killing them is an act of mercy – for it is better to kill them now than to let them starve to death. Yen also keeps Ma-Li as a lover and as an assistant to him. He does this because she was arrested under accusations of treason. Megan asks Yen to let go of Ma-Li, for him to be redeemed spiritually as an act of selflessness. Yen then asks Megan to be selfless in her own right and sacrifice her own freedom and give it to Ma-Li – thus practicing what she preaches. She agrees and lets Ma-Li go and chooses to stay with Yen to show him that Ma-Li has moved past her treasonous ways. However, Ma-Li lets down Megan, and uses her to get information to Yen’s antagonists that end up bringing down his whole enterprise. Megan realizes that her assumptions and understandings about people are simply too fallible. Her original understanding of Yen was that of her own racism and judgement, only to discover that he isn’t as heartless as she assumed. Her original understanding of Ma-Li was that of a victim of Yen, not interested in overpowering his authority, which become untrue. She even originally thought that the American living with Yen could save her from her circumstances, only to discover that the American was trying to make Yen a warlord so he could economically profit off him. Megan was forced to reconcile with her own misguided assumptions and judgements throughout the film and in the end, had to realize that her falling for General Yen was a symptom of reaching a human understanding with him and seeing him not as a general or gangster, but as someone of redemption. 

Camerawork: 

Capra opens the film was a shot of a burning chapel on the streets of Shanghai – using this shot to open up with an illustration of not only of the civil war happening with China, but of the Chinese frustrations with Christian ideology. This opening shot sets up the original assumptions for the viewer – the same assumptions that Megan possesses that of conflict and opposition. 

Capra likes to use camera swings to show events or conversations that are happening and then swing to show you how this event or conversation is affecting a third party. An example of this technique is used when the Christian priest is telling a group of Christian followers that Mongolian bandits crucified Christian merchants. Capra swings over to view a Chinese man looking disgruntled by this conversation. Capra shows us a conversation happening between several people and then swings to show you the affect of that conversation and how it is rubbing a Chinese citizen the wrong way.

Capra also utilizes overlapping imagery to convey things happening in dreams. He uses this to convey Megan’s disorientation from being knocked unconscious – the overlapping images conveys to the audience this sense of disorientation. He also uses this when Megan falls into the dream in which she sees Yen as a vampiric monster.

Best Shot: 

The best shot is at the end of the film when Megan comforts Yen after Ma-Li has betrayed both him and Megan, resulting in opposing forces crumbling the empire Yen has created. Yen appears seated at the center of the frame as Megan kneels next to him. She has lost her sense of understanding with the world around her and is finally being vulnerable with Yen – what Yen was trying to seek this whole time – vulnerability and understanding.