Picture of the day: Chinese general 1933

Walter Connolly, unnamed actress, and Nils Asther in The Bitter Tea of General Yen, 1933

for more about this film (and about Asther's 'Chinese' makeup) click here

blog rot! and favourite Asther films

Last night there was an attack of page rot on this blog, for no apparent reason. I lost information from the end of my blog pages in a very random way. That means the pictures, links and information I had gathered about all of Nils Asther's films from about 1932 onwards were deleted. It seems to be unrecovereable.

I backed up everything that is left relating to his early films left on the pages, but it was a bit of a shock. 

Anyway, I'm taking it as an excuse to reorganise the pages and hopefully they'll be better than ever when I'm finished.

As a cheer-me-up, I've been making a list in my head and deciding on my 5 favourite Nils Asther films of all time:

1. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

WHY: It's beautiful, complex and sexy. And it takes me on a thoughtful journey every time. At the start, it genuinely seems to be borderline racist, with the missionaries in their own little self-enclosed, superior world, not to mention with Asther playing Chinese. Then it twists and turns and becomes intensely philosophical with a plea for mutual understanding.

2. The Single Standard, 1929

WHY: Okay, it's not the most complex of stories. Young attractive woman has love affair. But Arden's  (Garbo's) decision to go for freedom and equality in love uplifts me every time, especially when you consider that was the 20s. And Garbo is breathtaking, and she sizzles onscreen with Asther.

3. The Cardboard Lover, 1928

WHY: Okay, I've not actually seen this one yet. But it's still my third favourite because it looks so funny and amazing, and Marion Davies is a hoot. Plus I totally have a thing for men who can do comedy, and Asther totally can.

4. Laugh, Clown, Laugh, 1928

WHY: The tragic ending of this moves me every time. Frankly, Asther is acted off the screen by Loretta Young and Lon Chaney, but that's why it's so good. There is that one shocking pre-code moment where Asther goes in for a bit of a fumble with Loretta Young... totally in character, but still. Wowzers. I think he was a bit of a bad boy.

5. By Candlelight, 1934

WHY: This is a polished little gem of a comedy from director James Whale, and it's guaranteed to make me feel better on any dismal soggy afternoon. I do tend to skip the rest and only watch Asther's scenes... just being honest. He's the best thing in it. So suave and adept at farce.

Other films of his I've seen so far (or part seen, with rough appreciation ratings)

Starring Roles

Make-Up **

The Man in Half Moon Street ***

Submarine Alert **

The Marriage of Corbal **

The Right to Romance **

Supporting Roles

Son of Lassie *** 

Behold we Live **

The Cossacks ***

Topsy and Eva *

Himmelskibbet ****

Samson and Delilah **** (he's only on screen for 30 sec)

Do I want to see them all? You bet.

La Grande Muraille (General Yen) 1933

 Cine Miroir Magazine, 8 June 1934

Nils Asther and Barbara Stanwyck in The Bitter Tea of General Yen

More about this film

picture of the day: La Grande Muraille, 1933

The Bitter Tea of General Yen, French poster, 1933

(La Grande Muraille - literal translation The Great Wall)

Nils Asther as General Yen, Barbara Stanwyck as the missionary Megan Davies

Director Frank Capra with Nils Asther and Barbara Stanwyck

Matte paintings in The Bitter Tea of General Yen, 1933

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is an extraordinarily beautiful movie.

Capra, its director, intended the film as a serious project - "Art with a capital A," he described it as later, admitting it to be his open attempt at an Oscar. He was not to win an Academy Award until two years later, and with an entirely different film, the screwball It Happened One Night. Still, Capra was proud of it until the end of his career, saying it "has more real movie in it than any other I did." 

Everything on the film was carefully arranged. Joseph Walker, the cinematographer, used a variety of lenses, including portrait lenses for the numerous, exquisite close-ups, and a diffusion device of his own design.

Matte paintings were also used lavishly. Often these mattes are so skilful that it's not apparent until a third or fourth viewing that there is even a painting there. These large-scale works were traditionally done in oil paints or pastels on glass and then combined with the live-action elements so the result blended seamlessly.

In The Bitter Tea of General Yen, the matte paintings were often combined with extra lighting to make them come alive. For example, in the night time scenes of civil war, there are fire effects, and when Megan (Barbara Stanwyck) looks out from General Yen's palace and sees couples by the river, it is softly illumined by lanterns and moonlight.

Megan (Barbara Stanwyck) and General Yen (Nils Asther) in the moonlight - a matte painting with lighting effects

Megan watches the lantern-lit revelries going on 

in the square below from her high balcony at the palace 

- the background being a matte painting

The people of Shanghai panic as the buildings catch fire, 

shown using matte paintings with lighting effects

Rain effects as well as lighting help this matte painting come alive

Arrival at Yen's palace.

Even in bright daylight, the matte paintings in this film are so fine 

they can easily be mistaken for the real thing.

The amazing interior of Yen's summer palace - again a matte painting

Information and images from:
Turner Classic Movies
Matte Shot Blogspot
Matte painting - Wikipedia

click on photos to make them bigger

*

picture of the day: my favourite picture

From The Bitter Tea of General Yen, 1933, directed by Frank Capra

Probably my favourite ever picture of Asther. 

His uniform was designed to emphasise his height, but that huge hexagonal window makes him look like a speck. He's big and small at the same time, and it moves me. 

As a plus, that disturbing makeup blurs with distance, becoming less like west passing off as east, but instead of another land entirely, one step through the silver of the screen.

makeup in The Bitter Tea of General Yen

From online blog 'iwillnotloveyoulongtime' -

A Swede playing an "Oriental," if you will. When did this become unacceptable? WHY was it acceptable? I'm just so confused... 

From Wikipedia on 'yellowface' -

...Asian characters were portrayed predominantly by white actors, often while artificially changing their looks with makeup in order to approximate East Asian facial characteristics.

These portrayals are considered an example of the racism in the United States and overt racism common to the times.

From Frank Capra's autobiography, 1971 -

General Yen was the big casting problem. I knew what I did not want -- a well-known star made up as an Oriental. I looked for a tall, overpowering, real Chinese. But there were no tall Chinese in casting directories, or even in laundries; most Chinese-Americans were short Cantonese. After many interviews we settled on a not-too-well-known Swedish actor, Nils Asther. He was tall, blue-eyed, handsome; spoke with a slightly pedantic "book" accent; his impassive face promised the serenity and mystery of a centuries-old culture.

Nils Asther

 Photoplay movie magazine, 1932?

But how could we make a Swede look Oriental? His blue eyes would photograph steel-gray in black-and-white film. That was an unusual plus. But what about the slant of his eyes? The prevailing method of "changing" Caucasian eyes into Oriental ones was to stretch and tape the outer ends of the eyes back toward the ears, fooling practically nobody. Besides which the actors looked more hideous than Oriental. There must be a better, more natural way. There was.

Closely studying Chinese features, I noticed two major differences between Oriental and Caucasian eyes: One, the upper Oriental eyelid is smooth and almost round, lacking the crease, or fold, of the Caucasian eyelid; and two, Oriental eyelashes are much shorter than Western eyelashes. We followed up the two clues: The make-up man covered Nils Asther's upper eyelids with smooth, round, false "skins", and clipped his eyelashes to one-third their natural length. Without adding any other make-up, we made photographic tests of Asther's face. On the screen he looked strange -- unfathomable. The stiff, upper eyelids kept his eyes in a permanent, half-closed position. Of a certain he was not a Caucasian -- and his face looked natural, uncontorted! Bedecked in rich Mandarin costumes, and a fez-like, black, tall skullcap for added height, Asther could pass for an awe-inspiring warlord. 

Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther

I added one final touch: an eccentric walk--long slow strides with both his long arms moving back and forth together--in parallel--with each stride. By keeping the camera low to accentuate height, Nils Asther became General Yen--ruthless, cultured, mysterious, and devastatingly attractive.

Frank Capra, Nils Asther, Barbara Stanwyck 

Toshia Mori, Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther

Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly

Walter Connolly, Nils Asther, Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Loo

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code... 

The code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" which mostly concerned morality. The second was a set of "particular applications" which was an exacting list of items which could not be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned but were assumed to be understood without clear demarcation. Miscegenation, better known as the mixing of the races, was forbidden.

David Palumbo-Lui, Asian/American: historical crossings of a racial frontier, Stanford University Press, 1999

Such substitutions (such as the playing of a Chinese man by the Swedish Nils Asther) helped directors skirt the anti-miscegengation clauses in the Hollywood code... most Hollywood films used whites to play Asians. 

The Hays Code banned mixed-race relationships in movies from 1930 - 1968. 

One motive in using white actors in makeup was to skirt this ban.

But the unintended hybridity created in staging Yen not as a racial hybrid but a cultural one produced the specter of something different... Yen was, as noted before, eminently "westernised", and yet able to function as Chinese as well. One reviewer found it hard to believe that a man such as Yen could even exist: 

"The Chinese warlord around whom the plot is built is a curious and rather questionable human composition of a poet, philosopher and bandit. He speaks rather fluent English and essays somewhat dainty American mannerisms... Customers may wonder about such a conglomerous combination of a man." (link)

The casting of Asther as an Asian produces inadvertently an image of the hybrid... Capra was looking for an "overpowering" figure to play Yen, which seemed to run counter to the "actual" Chinese he could see around him (or whom he imagined to populate the laundries of Los Angeles.) Instead, he manufactured one to fit his mind's eye from non-Asian material. The elements that were essential to the characterisation of Yen must be seen as derived from a particular formula that merged the western and the Asian. Crucially, Capra did not want a well-known American to play the role. In casting the Swedish actor Asther, Capra created a particular kind of foreign hybrid. Asther's "pedantic 'book' accent" signals specifially European breeding, and worked well to underline the notion that Yen had received such an education. Nevertheless, this Swede possessed a "passivity" that could be decoded as "oriental".

Photoplay movie magazine, 1932

David Sterrit at TCM - 
Like others connected with the picture, Stanwyck blamed its poor box-office showing on racist backlash. McBride quotes her as saying, "The women's clubs came out very strongly against it....I was so shocked. [Such a reaction] never occurred to me, and I don't think it occurred to Mr. Capra when we were doing it."

The film did poorly after complaints about its inter-racial relationship.

- but promotional posters like can't have helped.

New York Times, review from 1933 - 
Mr. Asther's make-up is impressive, with slanting eyes and dark skin. He talks with a foreign accent. This General Yen endeavors to win the attractive American girl's affection.

Variety, review from 1932 - 
Barbara Stanwyck is the white girl. Pleasant enough and for the first half where she repulses the Chinaman gathers some audience sympathy... After the Chinese general goes on the make for the white girl the picture goes blah. That's before the film is even half way.

Walter Connolly, Nils Asther, Barbara Stanwyck

Media Resources Centre, UC Berkley - 
"The Hays Office...received complaints from unnamed sources about the portrayal of missionaries in the film. In a 1950 memo to PCA Director Joseph I. Breen, PCA staff members advised that "it would be well if the company [Columbia] would drop its plans to reissue this picture." The memo stated: "Probably the most objectionable characterization is that of the American financial advisor to the General, played by Walter Connolly. He is a completely unscrupulous character without morals or ethics. This does not seem to be a good portrayal of an American in the Orient to be circulated at this time." The staff members also objected to the portrayal of the missionaries, stating that they were "shown to be somewhat silly and ineffectual," and asserted that there was "a very questionable element of the heroine offering herself sexually to the General."" 

Robert Orton - 

It goes without saying that the movie flopped (and inspired some openly racist reviews). Even being selected as the first motion picture ever to play Radio City Music Hall didn’t help. Capra later felt it was one of his very best films, and he was right, but it didn’t secure him the Oscar he so desperately wanted. 

The Men Who Made the Movies, Richard Schickel, Atheneum, New York, 1975, page 70 - 

Frank Capra: “The warlord said all the things that needed to be said about miscegenation, about racism. And I felt that this woman had depth enough to understand. She was so bigoted [at first]. And this reformation of this character from a bigot to one who could love anybody – why, this was an honest story to me.

from Megan's dream sequence