The Cheat
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.
From the archive
I've been researching newly public domain films from 1929 and earlier, so I'm uploading the best possible copies that I can find. The Cheat is about a woman who gambles herself into a large debt, and who must ask a Japanese ivory merchant for a loan. He offers to pay the debt in exchange for sexual favors, to which she refuses. While the film contains racist overtones and plot points, it did firmly establish actor Sessue Hayakawa as a sex symbol and movie star.
Why this is free to watch
The Cheat (1915) is hosted by the Internet Archive as a public-domain or openly licensed work, which means its copyright has expired, lapsed, or was released by the rights holder. The uploader declared an explicit licence, linked in the source panel. Nitrate streams the file directly from the Archive and hosts no video itself.
- Director
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Starring
- Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean, James Neill, Yutaka Abe, Dana Ong, Hazel Childers, Arthur H. Williams
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