This atypical Capra film starts in the Chinese Civil War but soon becomes an exotic, unrequited love story between an American missionary, Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck), and a Chinese feudal warlord (Nils Asther). This is an unusually lavish and beautiful production, epic in the early scenes of conflict, and then opulent at the General's palace.
Davis is an American missionary in Shanghai, saved from the chaos of the war by the powerful Yen. It's a vicarious adventure, as the horrified outsider becomes seduced by the brutal but sensual oriental. As she falls under his influence, she sees him less as an archetype and becomes absorbed by his eroticism.
Megan fits a common pattern for Americans abroad in cinema: evangelist, naive, hubristic and out of her depth. In trying to save Yen's soul she destroys him utterly even while she falls in love with the man and his aristocratic luxury. He takes poison while she returns home merely chastened by her experience, a more sophisticated woman.
This is a classic of the pre-code era. After 1934, even implying an affair between people of different races would be forbidden, as would the suicide. It's an imaginative and complex film. There is undeniably plenty of racial stereotyping, but actually by the fade it is Megan's intrusive Christianity which appears the more inexplicable, eccentric philosophy.