Hollywood in its formative years served as a mirror reflecting American society in all its complexity, including its deeply entrenched racist sentiments. The industry's earliest productions frequently pandered to prevailing prejudices, with D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) standing as the most notorious exemplar of this troubling trend. Premiering to widespread acclaim despite its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and dehumanising portrayal of African Americans, Griffith's epic cemented cinema's power to shape public perception while revealing the industry's willingness to exploit racial animosity for commercial gain. Curiously, 1915 also witnessed the release of another film that would simultaneously perpetuate racist stereotypes while paradoxically launching the career of Hollywood's first non-white star—Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat. This silent drama not only established DeMille as one of early Hollywood's most prominent directors but also created a cinematic lightning rod that would expose the contradictions inherent in America's racial politics during the silent film era.
The Cheat centres on Edith Hardy (Fannie Ward), a wealthy Long Island socialite whose extravagant lifestyle constantly exceeds her means. Ward, a retired stage actress making her film debut, portrays Edith as a woman utterly consumed by luxury and social status, her spendthrift tendencies clashing with her husband Jack's (played by Ward's real-life spouse Jack Dean) more conservative business approach . Edith's profligacy extends to neglecting payments to her maid, causing considerable embarrassment to Jack, a businessman on the cusp of a potentially lucrative deal. The narrative gains momentum when Edith encounters Hishuru Tori (Sessue Hayakawa), a wealthy Japanese ivory merchant whose enigmatic presence and striking appearance captivate her. Tori, dressed in Western attire and seemingly assimilated into high society, represents both exotic allure and dangerous temptation for the restless Edith.
Edith's position as treasurer of her local Red Cross chapter provides the mechanism for her moral downfall. When Jones (James Neill), an acquaintance of her husband, convinces her to invest $10,000 in what he claims will double her money, Edith faces the immediate problem of lacking such funds. Her solution—to "help herself" to the Red Cross's funds—reveals the depth of her moral bankruptcy. Predictably, the investment fails, leaving Edith desperate and terrified of the scandal that would destroy her social standing.
Tori presents Edith with what he frames as a solution: $10,000 in exchange for "payment" of her body. Edith reluctantly agrees, only to discover upon returning home that Jack's business venture has succeeded, rendering her financial predicament moot. Attempting to rectify her mistake, Edith returns to Tori's residence to repay the money, only to find him unwilling to release her from their arrangement. What follows constitutes the film's most infamous sequence: Tori assaults Edith, brands her shoulder, and prepares to rape her when she manages to shoot him in self-defence. Jack, having followed his suspicious wife, takes the blame for the shooting, leading to a courtroom drama where Edith ultimately saves her husband by revealing her branded shoulder and confessing her actions.
Fannie Ward's casting represented DeMille's attempt to capitalise on established stage talent for the nascent film medium. Though cinematographer Alwyn Wickoff successfully captured Ward's unusually youthful appearance for a woman in her forties, her performance exemplifies the theatrical excess that characterised early silent film acting. By modern standards, Ward's gestures appear exaggerated and unnatural, particularly when contrasted with Hayakawa's more restrained approach. The film's technical achievements lie primarily in DeMille's pioneering use of dramatic lighting, particularly in interior scenes where he employed what would later be termed "Rembrandt lighting"—arranging lights to cast partial illumination and shadow on actors' faces, creating psychological depth through visual contrast.
The Cheat achieved considerable popularity precisely because it tapped into widespread anti-Asian sentiment and the "Yellow Peril" mythology prevalent in early twentieth-century America. Unlike later decades under the restrictive Hays Code, early Hollywood faced few constraints in depicting miscegenation, though it consistently framed interracial relationships as inherently dangerous and non-consensual. Tori's character embodies racist stereotypes: initially presented as civilised through Western dress and manners, he reveals his "true" nature when surrounded by "exotic" decor in his Oriental-styled home, staffed by Asian servants. This narrative device reinforced the racist notion that Asian assimilation was merely superficial, with inherent savagery lurking beneath a thin veneer of Westernisation—a concept that resonated powerfully with contemporary audiences despite its patent absurdity.
Ironically, the very role that cemented these racist tropes also launched Sessue Hayakawa's extraordinary career. His more naturalistic acting style, combined with undeniable charisma and an aura of dangerous sophistication, captivated audiences in a manner that foreshadowed Rudolf Valentino's later success in The Sheik. Hayakawa's appeal transcended racial barriers in unexpected ways; as one contemporary critic observed, he tapped "a latent female urge to experience sex with a beautiful but savage man of another race". Despite the problematic nature of his roles, Hayakawa became one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars, earning $5,000 weekly by 1915 and eventually establishing his own production company that netted $2 million annually. His stardom represented a paradox: an Asian actor achieving unprecedented success while embodying the very stereotypes that constrained his career.
While The Cheat doesn't represent a radical departure from contemporary filmmaking techniques, it contains several noteworthy innovations beyond its lighting experiments. The film's relatively compact runtime (under an hour) reflects the transitional nature of 1915 cinema, caught between short one-reelers and feature-length productions. Its most enduring legacy, however, lies in the shocking branding sequence—a moment so provocative that it reportedly caused audiences to faint during screenings. This scene's visceral impact demonstrates DeMille's understanding of cinema's unique power to elicit physical responses from viewers, a technique that would become central to Hollywood's approach to audience manipulation.
The film provoked immediate backlash from Japanese American communities, particularly the Los Angeles newspaper Rafu Shimpo, which waged a campaign against The Cheat and condemned Hayakawa for his perceived complicity in anti-Japanese bigotry. When the United States entered World War I as Japan's ally in 1917, Paramount Pictures found itself in an awkward position, having distributed a film that portrayed Japanese people as dangerous predators. The studio's solution was both cynical and revealing: in 1918, they re-released the film with new intertitles identifying Tori as "Haka Arakau," a Burmese ivory merchant. As film historian Robert Birchard observed, this change likely occurred because there were "not enough Burmese in the country to raise a credible protest". This revision, which made original 1915 version lost, underscores Hollywood's willingness to manipulate racial representations purely for commercial and political expediency.
The Cheat's narrative proved remarkably durable, spawning multiple adaptations. An operatic version titled La Forfaiture premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1921, though it enjoyed only three performances. A 1923 silent remake starring Pola Negri has since been lost, while a 1931 sound version featured Tallulah Bankhead. Significantly, Hayakawa himself starred in a 1937 French remake titled Forfaiture, where his character was reimagined as a Mongolian prince. These adaptations demonstrate the persistent appeal of the film's core narrative, even as racial politics evolved.
Despite his early success, Hayakawa's career faced significant challenges as anti-Japanese sentiment intensified during the 1920s and 1930s. By 1922, rising xenophobia and business difficulties compelled him to leave Hollywood for Broadway and eventually Europe. His return to Hollywood in the 1930s proved difficult; though he starred in Daughter of the Dragon (1931) opposite Anna May Wong, the advent of sound cinema presented new obstacles due to his accent. Hayakawa's career culminated in his Oscar-nominated performance as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a role that brought him renewed acclaim while ironically casting him once again as an authoritarian Asian figure.
The Cheat occupies a complex position in film history—a technically innovative work that simultaneously advanced cinematic language while propagating deeply harmful racial stereotypes. Its significance lies not in excusing its racism but in understanding how early Hollywood both reflected and shaped America's racial consciousness. The film's paradoxical legacy—launching the career of Hollywood's first Asian star while reinforcing the very prejudices that would later marginalise him—reveals the industry's contradictory relationship with diversity. Today, The Cheat serves as a crucial historical document, reminding us that cinematic progress often occurs alongside profound social regressions, and that the medium's power to shape perception carries both creative potential and ethical responsibility.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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