Lost in the Movies: The Vulnerable Throne: capsule on The Bitter Tea of General Yen + brief reflections on Knights of the Round Table, Land of the Pharaohs & Rasputin and the Empress (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #47)

The Vulnerable Throne: capsule on The Bitter Tea of General Yen + brief reflections on Knights of the Round Table, Land of the Pharaohs & Rasputin and the Empress (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #47)



For the second time in this "Hollywood Classic"-themed season, I'm rounding up several films in a single podcast (in the first of those episodes I covered seventeen rather than just four). In this case, the coverage is lopsided; though not a full review, The Bitter Tea of General Yen is the focus for about seven minutes whereas the other three receive brief reflections lasting about a minute or two - touching on aspects of Knights of the Round Table, Land of the Pharaohs, and Rasputin and the Empress that I found noteworthy or compelling. I wanted to gather all four films in one public episode (they were initially watched and capsuled on my Patreon podcasts at different times) because they are so obviously linked in their stories. All four films depict the downfall of a ruler, usually due to romantic or sexual intrigue. General Yen slips from power by listening to a beautiful Christian missionary, King Arthur loses his wife to his best friend, Pharaoh Khufu is bewitched by a foreign princess determined to avenge her people's oppression, and the Tsarina Alexandria allows the diabolical Rasputin into her inner circle to soothe her son's illness. As has been the case all season, this podcast serves as a bridge on both sides; the previous month's episode on The Shanghai Gesture dealt, like Bitter Tea, with pre-World War II China while next month's episode on Marie Antoinette will conclude the series by focusing, like Rasputin, on a female monarch who falls to popular revolution.


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THE LINE-UP
4:09 THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (1933)

11:10 KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE (1953)

13:13 LAND OF THE PHARAOHS (1955)

15:05 RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS (1932)


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