The Cheat
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The Cheat

The Cheat

6.0(66 votes)
1915
0h 59m
Drama

A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.

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Production

Budget:$17,311
Revenue:$137,365
Companies:
Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company
Paramount Pictures

Languages

Original:en
Spoken:
No Language

Reviews

CinemaSerf

6/10

Vaudevillian Fannie Ward made her cinematic debut here as "Edith", a rather shallow woman married to Jack Dean ("Richard"), a stockbroker. She lives for life's fripperies, and when he starts bemoaning the amounts of money she is frittering away on luxuries, she decides to procure some cash of her own by embezzling $10,000 from a charity she runs. Desperate to return the money, she turns to the distinctly shady Burmese ivory trader "Hishiru Tori" (Sessue Hayakawa) who offers her a deal - but at an horrible price... It has a very theatrical style to it, this production, but that's not a bad thing. It helps us to focus on the characters - with Ward, and particularly the sinister "Tori" - working well to create the atmospheric, shadowy - almost menacing, look of the film. The use of light and shade is also used to good effect for that purpose too, and although the ending runs a bit to melodrama, this story of avarice and repentance is certainly worth an hour of anyone's time.

6/6/2022

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