The Cheat (1915)

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Movie
Original title The cheat
The Cheat FilmPoster.jpeg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1915
length 59 minutes
Rod
Director Cecil B. DeMille
script Hector Turnbull , Jeanie Macpherson
production Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company , Cecil B. DeMille
music Juan Maglio (film music); Robert Israel (1994 version)
camera Alvin Wyckoff
cut Cecil B. DeMille
occupation

The Cheat is an American feature film, a jealous drama directed by Cecil B. DeMille from 1915.

action

Long Island today: Richard Hardy, a New York businessman, has invested in stocks and is confident that the deal will be successful. His wife Edith, whom he adores, meanwhile only thinks about having fun and buying a new wardrobe, for which there is currently no money. Since Richard spends all his time in the office, Edith lets Haka Arakau, an attractive East Asian prince with perfect western manners, accompany her with her social obligations - she is the treasurer of the Red Cross . Arakau owns a house on Long Island in which he collects wooden Asian figurines, which he uses to mark as his property.

When Edith hears from a friend of her husband's that the stock business Richard has invested in is doomed, she instructs the friend to invest $ 10,000 in other, more promising stocks on her behalf; she takes the money from the Red Cross cash register entrusted to her. However, the money is lost on the investment and Edith is desperate. Arakau mercilessly offers her help only on condition that she becomes his lover. Edith agrees.

A way out was announced when Richard soon came into possession of the expected return. Pleading gambling debts, Edith asks him for a check for $ 10,000, which he will gladly write to her. In the hope of being able to free herself from her obligation, she goes to Arakau with the check that night. However, he declares that he is not ready to be paid off. Edith desperately threatens that she would rather shoot herself than stay his lover, but when he puts his pistol in her hand, she lacks the strength to carry out her threat. Arakau then wrestles her down and presses his brand on her bare shoulder. Edith fires a shot that hits him in the shoulder and escapes. Immediately afterwards Richard appears, who finds his own check on the injured man and realizes that only Edith could have committed the crime. When the police appear, in order to cover Edith, he claims that he himself shot Arakau.

When Edith learns of Richard's arrest from the newspaper, she rushes to jail and confesses everything that has happened to her husband. Richard forgives her, but insists on taking the blame for the shot. Edith goes to Arakau again and offers him money to drop the accusation against Richard. Arakau doesn't want to know anything about it. In the end, she even offers herself to him, but this time he refuses: "You cannot cheat me twice".

After Arakau testifies that it was Richard who shot him, the trial ends with a guilty verdict. Desperate, Edith turns to the judge and confesses that she fired the shot at Arakau herself. As an explanation for this act, she bares her branded shoulder, which causes a commotion in the courtroom as the audience realizes who the real culprit is: Arakau. The verdict against Richard is overturned. At Edith's side he leaves the hall as a free man.

Production and theatrical release

Cecil B. DeMille also directed this self-produced film, but was not mentioned in the title as director. Behind the camera was Alvin Wyckoff , with whom DeMille had worked 16 times since 1914, including in "Carmen" (1915). The 44-year-old Fannie Ward , an internationally renowned Broadway star, for whom "The Cheat" was only the second film was selected for the female lead . By 1920 she appeared in 24 other films. Jack Dean , who played the husband in "The Cheat" , had just as little film experience as Ward . Both actors had made their film debut shortly before in a comedy by George Melford - "The Marriage of Kitty" (1915). Sessue Hayakawa , who was born in Japan , was only discovered for the film a year earlier. Through his role in "The Cheat" Hayakawa moved up into the ranks of the top stars in Hollywood and took in fees that only Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin received.

The shooting took place between October 20 and November 10, 1915. The cost of producing the film was US $ 17,311 (estimate). "The Cheat" premiered on December 13, 1915. Paramount Pictures took over the distribution . The film was re-released in 1918 after protests by the Japanese Association of Southern California . The subtitles were changed so that the Japanese villain Sessue Hayakawas became a Burmese .

Asian stereotypes

The moral essence of the film can be found in one of the subtitles , which quotes the beginning of a famous ballad by Rudyard Kipling : “East is East and West is West, and never the Twain shall meet.” (East is East and West is West, and the two will never come together.)

Interracial love was a feared topic in Hollywood that was almost entirely banned from the silver screen from 1934 to 1967 with the Production Code that governed self-censorship in the American film industry. Nineteen years before the code was introduced, it was still possible to depict the sexual relationship between a white man and a Far Eastern man, but “The Cheat” teaches that the consequences of such a relationship are terrible.

The film marks the beginning of a long tradition of films in Hollywood in which Far Eastern men - if they are sexually active at all - are characterized as perverted , especially sadistic . One of the earliest films in which Asian male characters were allowed normal sexuality was in 1937 The Good Earth .

The characterization of the Japanese lover as possessive and cruel did not prevent Hayakawa from becoming a crush in the rank of Rudolph Valentino with this role among female audiences - the Asian-American as well as the white .

In the original version of "The Cheat", Hayakawa played a Japanese ; the name of the character was Hishuru Tori. All of the props in the film identify the lover as Japanese, not just the Japanese wall screens ( Shoji ) in his house and the Japanese archway ( Torii ), which he branded as a trademark of his belongings. After its premiere, the film drew harsh criticism from the Japanese Association of Southern California for its denunciating, unrealistic portrayal of a Japanese. The subtitles of the film were therefore changed; after the new publication in 1918, the Japanese was announced as a Burmese - as a representative of an ethnic group whose discrediting was perceived as less explosive in California at the time.

Awards

The film was included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1993, which classified it as particularly worth preserving.

Remakes

Web links