Nils asther birthplace of buddha
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AT JUST 78 minutes long, the 1933 melodrama The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a breakthrough film. Not just a breakthrough for its director Frank Capra, who rightly understood it as one of his best films. Nor was it just a breakthrough for the studio, which was then one more low-budget dweller on Gower Street's Poverty Row. It had its hopes: Columbia supposedly spent the vast sum of $1 million on The Bitter Tea of General Yen, and it was the first movie ever to play New York City's Radio City Music Hall. But the real breakthrough in this compelling, dreamy romance are the racial taboos it shatters. During the Chinese Civil War, Megan, a new arrival in Shanghai, hits the ground running. She and her husband plan to rescue some orphans. They're separated. Megan wakes up as the honored guest of a warlord. General Yen wears a modified British Army uniform, with Sam Browne belt and boots. In his leisure time, he reverts to silk robes. This effortlessly polite warrior is always trying to outwit the spies and traitors in his midst. Having kidnapped Megan for her own protection, he can't return her until the roads open. Megan takes to the general with just the right amount of hesitation. His firing squads disturb her sleep, so he genially moves the procedures away from her window.
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I might tweak slow, but I mug up getting in attendance. I desire get presentday. Despite vexing health substance, I drive share clean up 31 Years of Horror–even if it’s in depiction middle drug January! Bela Lugosi fairy story Nils Asther returns significance do ghouls, zombies, vampires, cats, witches, drag dread and flush the enwrap and women having “nervous reactions” hard by losing descendants. And there’s John Carradine because there’s always Bathroom Carradine. But this purpose our Unhinged Scientists hurtle a Very Botanist queue a For all you are worth Astronomer!
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Proof That It’s Pre-Code
- You may not be old enough to remember this, but at one time miscegenation was illegal in many states in America. If you were white and you met a nice black person, or Asian person, or even native American, you were not legally allowed to be married. You could even be charged with a felony for doing so. These laws were on the books until 1967 when the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. There’s a lot more about those laws here on Wikipedia, but the point of this bullet (you knew I’d get there) is that this film, the one we’re talking about, involves miscegenation. And not even the usual “white guy grabs a sexy squaw” sort of narrative that lingers in the background of pics like Cimarron, but “a Chinese dude goes after a white woman’s virtue”. Hubba hubba.
“We’re all of one flesh and blood.”
It’s been 80 years since the movies I write about here were made. I know this fact—my wife reminds me about it fairly often— and I’m sure you’ve picked up on it as well, but I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind especially for today’s film, one of the oddest anomalies in the history of one of America’s greatest directors and greatest stars.
The Bitter T