The Bitter Tea of General Yen

[mallorys_camera]

A man in a suit came into the store yesterday. He confided in me that he was deep into a bathroom renovation project and then wandered around the shelves for half an hour, grabbing Anal Angst, Screaming Sphincter, the complete Ass In the ____ series and finally Who Cut the Cheese: A Cultural History of the Fart (our perennial bestseller.) Decorative items. Fuck the guest towels. I am amused and $75 richer.

Also yesterday I found The Bitter Tea of General Yen at Monster Video. I haven't been into movies very much this past year, they lack the narrative complexity and rich characterization of the average Law and Order rerun, at least on its thirteenth viewing. I found it because Maya insisted on dragging the old folks out to dinner and this meant a stop-off beforehand for Max to get his hair sheared and then another stop-off at the video store for Max to rent scary movies with which to torment and torture the pliant and beautiful young Maya post prandium.

Why she puts up with this, I don't know. Ah, teen love!

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a very bizarre movie. Way back in the Jurassic era when I was slightly younger than Max and Maya are now, I lied my way into a job as a candy girl at a San Francisco art film house called the Surf Theater. That must have been where I first saw it, the B billing on some double feature with an Ingmar Bergman flick. I know I've seen it more than twenty times; though I couldn't remember any of the specifics, there was a certain rote ghost urgency to the sequence of the scenes when I finally persuaded Ben to turn off the Democratic Convention (“Take off the Red Shoes!”) and let me at the VCR.

Beautiful young American missionary is “rescued” (read: kidnapped) from Shanghai's' great Chapei fire by Chinese warlord with ambiguous moral philosophy. Interracial hijinx ensue but do not over-reach the watchful eye of the Hayes code. Not a good movie by any means but the character of the warlord is compelling and the relationship between the two protagonists oddly moving. Great last scene: having unwittingly brought about the warlord's ruin, Barbara Stanwick is the only human left in his summer palace as he prepares to commit suicide (the cyanide-laced tea of the title.) She dresses herself in Chinese opera finery, bursts into his bedroom, and then puts the pillow behind his head and lays her head upon his lap as he dies. (You can see why some cinematiste thought this would make a good complement to Persona.)

Great plot. Great plot. Wouldn't it be fun to try and transpose it, say to current events in Afghanistan?