Screen The Bitter Tea Of Gen. Yen, Film Of American Girl In China, At The New Theater A beautiful American girl goes to China to convert the natives to Christianity and is herself converted by a handsome military leader to the older wisdom of the East-that is the amai-ing theme vpon which The Bitter Tea of General Yen is built. This film, which opened at the New Theater yesterday, is in several ways an extraordinary achievement. It defies one of the most firmly established taboos of the screen, in that it shows a white girl falling in love with a yellow man and offering to become his handmaiden, voluntarily, respectfully and unconditionally. The story is told from the viewpoint of China, and the missionaries get all the worst of it. The white girl's efforts to explain her American ideas are made to seem no more than a flood of presumptuous and empty words when subjected to the bland and biting contempt of the yellow man. Everything in the picture tends to illustrate the majesty and beauty of a culture and art which were old 1,000 years before Columbus found America. These things do not mean that The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a picture for a select few. The social and political aspects all depend on the development of an exotic love story which should have a very powerful effect at the box office. o Nils Asther, who has been more or less of an inconseauential. decorative sort of an actor, suddenly springs into the front rank with a characterization of Yen which can onlv be called superb. Handsomer than any Chinese general has a rieht to be. Mr. Asther appears to equal advantage in Western ized uniform or mandarin ' robe. But his laurels do not depend on his an- pearance. He has been able to assume an Oriental personality. He is suave. secretive, subtle, cruel, forceful, proud. Many sudden flashes reveal elimrjses of a profoundly mystical and complex nature, but at the end one feels that even so there are still unsounded depths in this fascinating Chinese gentleman bandit, who is able to sav. "To conquer a province or a woman ' mhof. ) ; IT .0,1 nuoio tile uiacieiiLi:: Barbara Stanwyck is not as eood in the role of heroine as she might be, lacking as she does the necessary cleverness and subtlety to portray the tine points of Meoan's strueele be tween her heart and her prejudices. But she is pretty enough to furnish an adequate motif for Yen's reckless gamble, in which he stakes his career, fortune and life itself on the chance of winning her love. Walter Connolly gives a vivid impersonation of a Yankee adventurer in the pay of Yen, a loud-mouthed, wide-awake fellow with a eenius for raising taxes; and several talented Chinese actors conrolete a cast nf nn. usual excellence. Director Frank Canra deserves much of the credit for this picture. He has been particularly successful in the first brief but vivid scenes laid amid the attack on Chapei, in showing the despotic authority exercised by Yen in his own province, and in tiortravine the splendors and peculiar morality of tiie Chinese culture. D. K.
