The Cheat is one of the earliest and most interesting films by Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959), one of the founders of American cinema. Between 1914 and 1958, he directed 70 feature films, both silent and sound films. His later work is known for its epic scale and cinematic spectacle, but his early films also include many intimate social dramas, comedies and westerns.
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[Sessue Hayakawa]
The Cheat is such a social drama and it has sometimes been called a racist film in reviews, but that is not correct. On the contrary, in The Cheat the role of the sinister Japanese character is not played by a made-up Caucasian (as was for example the case in Broken Blossoms by Griffith from 1919), but by a Japanese actor: Sessue Hayakawa (1889-1973). Hayakawa was the first Asian-American male lead in Hollywood and became a sex symbol, especially among women. He was among the highest paid actors in Hollywood for several years, starring in romantic dramas in the 1910s and early 1920s. He also founded his own production company. In the wake of rising anti-Japanese sentiment after World War I, Hayakawa left Hollywood in 1922 to work in Europe and Japan, but returned several times. He is best known for his role as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he received an Oscar nomination. His minimalist acting style, in which he conveyed intense emotion through subtle eye movements, was seen as refreshing compared to the exaggerated gestures often used in silent films. In this respect, Fanny Ward, the "star" of The Cheat, goes too far in her silly overacting.
She plays Edith Hardy, a spoiled society woman who, despite the warnings of her husband Richard (Jack Dean), continues to buy expensive clothes. Richard, a stockbroker, tells her that all his money is tied up in a speculation and he cannot pay her bills until the stocks rise. Yet she even postpones her maid's salary to buy a new dress. Note the enormous, ridiculous hat she wears at the beginning of the film. Edith is also treasurer of a local Red Cross fundraiser for Belgian refugees (the film is set in the years that World War I raged in Europe). The gala ball for the fundraiser is held at the home of Hishuru Tori, a wealthy Japanese ivory trader. He is an elegant and dangerously sexy man, to whom Edith is attracted; he shows her his room full of valuables and brands one with a hot mark to show that it is his.
A socialite friend of the Hardys tells Edith that Richard's speculation will not yield any profit and offers her a better investment. He promises to double her money within a day if she trusts it to him. Edith, not wanting to wait for Richard's profit, takes the $10,000 that the Red Cross has collected from her safe and gives it to the friend.
The next day, her shocked friend tells her that his investment failed and that the money is completely lost. The Red Cross ladies expect the next day to hand over the money they have raised. Edith goes to Tori to desperately beg for a loan, and he agrees to write her a check in exchange for her sexual favors the next day. Edith reluctantly agrees, takes the check, and gives the money to the Red Cross. Shortly after, Richard excitedly announces that his investments have been successful and that they are now very wealthy. Edith asks him for $10,000, supposedly for a bridge loan, and he writes her a check without objection.
When she takes the check to Tori, however, he refuses to let her out of their "arrangement." When Edith resists his advances, he takes the brand iron he uses to mark his property and brands her on the shoulder. In the ensuing fight, Edith finds a gun on the ground and shoots him. She runs away, while Richard, having heard the commotion, rushes into the house. There he finds the check he had given to Edith. Tori is only wounded in the shoulder, not killed. When his servants call the police, Richard declares that he was the shooter, and Tori does not deny this.
Edith begs Tori not to press charges, but he refuses to spare Richard. She visits Richard in his cell and confesses everything, but he insists that she tell no one else and let him take the blame. During the crowded trial, both Richard and Tori, who appears with his arm in a sling, testify that Richard was the shooter, but they refuse to say why. The jury finds Richard guilty.
This is too much for Edith, and she rushes to the witness stand, shouting that she shot Tori: "And this is my defense." She exposes her shoulder and shows the brand mark to the courtroom. The male spectators become enraged and rush forward, ready to lynch Tori. The judge protects him and keeps the crowd at bay. He then quashes the verdict and the prosecutor withdraws the charges. Richard lovingly and protectively leads the remorseful Edith out of the courtroom.
The title "The Cheat" of course refers to Edith, who cheats on her husband, on the Red Cross and finally on her Japanese friend. Toru keeps his word and only forces her the do the same - her husband could learn from his example!
When originally released in 1915, the character of Hishuru Tori was described as a Japanese ivory trader. Japanese Americans protested the film because of its negative and sinister portrayal of a Japanese person. When the film was re-released in 1918, the character was renamed "Haka Arakau" and described in the title cards as a "Burmese ivory king." Apparently there were no Burmese in California to protest!
The film contains a major cultural error: Tori is shown using a branding iron to brand his name, in the shape of a Shinto gate, on the art works he has collected, and eventually uses it to mark Edith as his property. In Japan, however, only criminals were branded, and it is unthinkable that a collector would brand his art or other possessions. This mistake probably arose because Japanese collectors did put a red seal with their calligraphed name on paintings, as was also customary in China. Ceramics were not stamped, but stored in wooden boxes to which a paper label with the seal could be attached. But the weird idea of branding a woman as one's possession is in itself an idea that would have been worthy of a writer as Tanizaki Junichiro!
That the American men want to lynch Tori at the end of the film is not, in my opinion, a racist tendency of the film, but a realistic reflection of the racism against Japanese and other Asians that was unfortunately normal in America at that time (even marriage between whites and another race was forbidden - in 1933, large demonstrations were organized against Frank Capra's film The Bitter Tea of General Yen, in which Barbara Stanwyck plays a white woman who is attracted to a Chinese man).
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My goal is to discover interesting movies that are not already on all the "greatest movie" lists.
All films discussed in this blog are public domain and can be watched via YouTube or Archive.org