30's Recommendations

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933)

Exotic, unique, one-of-a-kind film by Capra still deserves to be seen, enjoyed and debated. Although Capra had already made 20 feature films in the seven years prior to this film, this is the the greatest example of his filmmaking technique up to this point. On display are his expert use of montage, special effects, crowd scenes, florid cinematography, musical score and sound design, handling of actors, humor, cinematic storytelling, and yes, sentimentality. This film contains more actual "action" scenes that any other Capra flick, but when you come right down to it, it may also contain more "sex" scenes, even though the story is one of a "taboo" love.

The film shows an Americanized version of the events occuring in China in the early 1930s. The film says that there is a Civil War going on in the middle of the West trying to indoctrinate the land with Christian missionaries. The suggestion of a war with Japan is never mentioned. Additionally, General Yen (a terrific character) is portrayed by Danish actor Nils Asther (in easily his greatest performance), but nowadays some people have a problem with a White portraying an Asian. Before you jump on the racist bandwagon, make sure to watch the film and compare all the performances to what you might expect if a Chinese actor were cast in the title role. Hawaiian-born Chinese actor Richard Loo does have a prominent role in the film, but he plays the general's military second-in-command.

Even with all of Capra's cinematic talent and Asther's super performance, the film belongs to Barbara Stanwyck as the American missionary who's forced to undergo a transformation due to her experiences in China, and she's extremely sexy. Capra's longtime co-star Walter Connelly also turns in a wonderfully-jaded performance as General Yen's American Secretary of the Treasury. I think I've already spent too much time discussing this underseen film, so my recommendation is to seek it out. No matter what you think of it, it should be incomparable to anything else you've ever seen, and it has historical and cinematic significance.

The Young in Heart (dir: Richard Wallace; scr: Paul Osborn, pro: David O. Selznick, 1938)



This is a very modest, mostly-unknown film which also happens to be one of the most-perfectly constructed movies I've ever seen. It's a comedy about a family of con artists who get kicked off an ocean liner and thwarted from marrying into a millionaire's family, but somehow luckily, they immediately come across a lonely old rich woman, "Miss Fortune" (Minnie Dupree) who takes them to her heart aboard a train. This suits the family fine since they've never earned an honest living in their life, and they see a chance to engender themselves to the old woman so much that they might just make off with her inheritance when she dies. The family consists of "Sahib" (Roland Young in probably my fave performance of his), his absent-minded wife Marmy (Billie Burke, the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz and Young's wife in the Topper films), their daughter George-Ann (Janet Gaynor) who's being courted by young Scotsman Duncan (Richard Carlson), and their son Richard (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). Once the family gets to England and moves in with Miss Fortune, they begin to see things a little bit differently than they have in the past. Although they're still counting on supporting themselves with the old lady's "fortune", Sahib becomes a crackerjack salesman and Richard goes to work for the first time in his life to impress his American "boss" (Paulette Goddard).

The Young in Heart is a wonderful combo of hard-boiled cynicism and uplifting sentiment. It's rare to find a movie with so many bald-faced, common-sense emotions on its sleeves, especially concerning a group of cold-hearted takers confronted by one warm-hearted giver. Every time I watch the film (as I did tonight on TCM), I find myself with an enormous smile planted on my face for the entire 91 minutes, but it's occasionally broken by my smile cracking open loudly into hearty laughter or my tear ducts going into overdrive at the simple honesty of how good life can be if families and friends just found a way to "let it be". This film is crammed with so many memorable and original moments: the Flying Wombat, the penguins at the London Zoo, looking for the dog with the black eyebrow, Duncan completely hating George-Ann and her family but finding himself more attracted to her with each moment, the train wreck, Miss Fortune's lawyer (the awesome Henry Stephenson), Richard's hangover, Sahib "getting his head handed to him by his boss" (HA!), and many others. The cast is uniformly excellent, but the film would never work without the wonderful Minnie Dupree, who only made three other films. If you ever get a chance, watch this beautiful film, and remember to tell me what you think of it, even if you think I'm crazy! Thanks for reading.

WOW! Edit: Some automobile historian posted scenes from The Young in Heart because the awesome "Flying Wombat" was really the Phantom Corsair, which said historian says cost $24,000 to produce in 1938 ($400,000 in today's dollars!!)

Check the actual link at YouTube to read what he said. Make sure you go to the right column, under the "Added: June 23, 2008" words and click on (more info) to learn more.

I love this movie!