Frank Capra (1933)
An unusual Capra film and an unusual commercial failure for him: the two things are surely not unrelated. Adapted by Edward E Paramore Jr from a novel by Grace Zaring Stone, the movie has racial implications that must have discomfited audiences. It’s the tale of a tense, reciprocated passion between a Chinese warlord and the Christian New Englander he abducts; although that basic scenario may sound comically melodramatic, Capra treats it seriously and the performances of Barbara Stanwyck and Nils Asther in the title role are intense and complex. Besides, the material was dynamically contemporary: the Chinese Civil War, which is the setting for the narrative, had begun in 1927 and was still going on (the novel was published only a few months before the film was released). I was struck from the start by the fluency of the staging and the acting: a house full of missionaries in Shanghai is awaiting the arrival of Megan Davis, who’s travelled from America for her marriage to one of their number, Robert Strike. These early sequences are striking both for the vivid naturalness of the playing and especially for the chilling anecdote told by an elderly bishop (Emmett Corrigan), who explains why he feels his life’s work in China has been futile:
‘I was telling the story of the crucifixion to a group of Mongolian bandits. I thought I was really getting to them. They kept moving closer and closer and they seemed so intent. A few days later, a group of travellers were captured in the desert by these bandits – they crucified them. I had misunderstood their reaction to my story. That, my friends, is the nature of Chinamen.’
When the bland, well-scrubbed Strike (Gavin Gordon) learns there are orphans to rescue in the war zone, he postpones the marriage ceremony. His dauntless fiancée insists on going with him: this is how Yen – whom she’s encountered briefly and accidentally on her arrival in Shanghai and who is already smitten with her – takes possession of Megan. She is from ‘one of the finest old New England families’, according to the hostess of the wedding-that-never-happens (or is never seen to happen: it’s nicely ambiguous at the end as to whether Megan is returning to marry Strike or to start a completely new life – even if the emotional imperative of the story dictates the latter). Barbara Stanwyck isn’t obvious casting as a would-be Christian missionary. She doesn’t embody the fusion of social and religious superiority that Katharine Hepburn would have exuded – but Stanwyck’s sensuality makes Megan a more surprising as well as an ungovernable presence: you see why the General is besotted. (According to the BFI programme note, Stanwyck had recently ended an affair with Capra so that Yen’s thwarted infatuation with Megan had a resonance for the director and his leading lady.) Stanwyck gives herself to the role in what seems a remarkably modern, unself-conscious way.
As Yen, who as his financial adviser (Walter Connolly) says, loses ‘His land, his army, his life’ as a result of his love for Megan, Nils Asther may not be convincingly Chinese, but he is convincingly exotic and his quiet, careful voice and relentless, increasingly anguished watchfulness are compelling. The film is dramatically lit by Joseph Walker (there was an unfortunate technical hitch in NFT1 which made for a short intermission between the penultimate and last reels). And Capra orchestrates, with great aplomb, a variety of elements: emotionally charged and sustained exchanges between the two principals; crowd scenes indoors and outdoors; occasional bursts of warfare; a remarkable dream sequence which shows us Megan’s ambivalence towards the General (the aspects of racial fear and sexual attraction that ambivalence contains). With Toshia Mori as Yen’s concubine.
1 November 2010
