The Bitter Tea of General Yen as "Capra-corn"

As Smoodin points out in his article ("Regulating National Markets: Chinese Censorship and The Bitter Tea of General Yen"), The Bitter Tea of General Yen was made just prior to the point in Capra's career for which he would become most well-known. His films of the post-It Happened One Night period are often referred to as "Capra-corn", and contain the elements that audiences have come to think of when seeing a Capra film. I would argue that the film has more in common with Capra's later works than might be apparent at first. Two areas that I see this in are: the contradictory nature of the relationship between the two leads, and the role of the supporting character as a kind of anchor to the protagonist.

I would point to the contradictory nature of the relationship between the two lead characters, Megan (Barbara Stanwyck) and General Yen (Nils Asther) as a major similarity. Despite her clear attraction for General Yen, the film complicates this with the inherently racist attitudes toward the relationship. Being a Classical Hollywood film, the viewer knows that whatever romance there is will ultimately be unsuccessful because of the racial elements. While Capra never again tackled the idea of interracial romance in his work, his films often present a very strong contradiction between the backgrounds of their leading characters. An obvious example is the class differences between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934), but I think a much more revealing example can be seen in the difference between, say, Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), or James Stewart and Jean Arthur in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and perhaps mo
st importantly, between Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in Meet John Doe (1941). In these films, there is often an almost cruel treatment, at some point in the film, by the female character toward the male character. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, for instance, there is the moment when Gary Cooper realizes that the woman he has fallen in love with has been exploiting him by writing humiliating stories about him for the newspaper. In The Bitter Tea of General Yen, this contradiction begins by presenting Stanwyck's character as a missionary, automatically revealing a patronizing if well-intentioned attitude toward the Chinese characters (the scene in which she risks danger to save the children from the orphanage is a good way of off-setting the casually racist attitudes displayed by the characters gathered for the wedding in the previous scene. Obviously, Megan has to be shown to be an inherently good, sympathetic character in order for the film to work at all.) This attitude prev
ails throughout the film, with her character torn between her true feelings for the General, and the expectations of her class and cultural background to suppress those feelings. There are moments of near-cruelty in Stanwyck's treatment of the General, motivated by her fear of her own romantic feelings for him. Unlike the social and class divides present in later Capra films, the racial divide in The Bitter Tea of General Yen is never bridged, with the film taking a "tragic" ending instead.

Another element present here which recurs through Capra's later work is that of the supporting role of a cynical, often wise-cracking "friend" to one of the protagonists, who almost serves to keep them anchored in their more emotionally unstable moments. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Capra uses the Lionel Stander character in this capacity; in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it's the Thomas Mitchell character; and in Meet John Doe, the Walter Brennan character serves this purpose. In each, this "friend" provides a kind of counterpoint to whatever the protagonist is feeling at any given moment. In The Bitter Tea of General Yen, it's the Walter Connolly character who serves this purpose. Although presented as an opportunist and a schemer, he ends up as a kind of friend to Stanwyck's character largely by virtue of the fact that he's the only other American in the film by that point. He isn't terribly sympathetic to her, at least until the end of the film. Unlike Megan, his character
is much more cynical, trying to profit off of General Yen and the war, and talks very condescendingly to the other characters, unlike Megan, who's desire to help remains strong. Yet, in the final scene, he also consoles Megan. His behavior is, itself, almost contradictory, but this is in keeping with the way Capra uses this kind of character throughout his films.

Although the film comes from earlier in Capra's career, these similarities to his later work reveal much about the character dynamics (as well as the limitations imposed on them by the racial elements). In this sense, The Bitter Tea of General Yen may have more in common with later Capra than is at first apparent.

-Matt Barry