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Manslaughter/ The Cheat (1922)
Rating:
Starring: Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean, Yutaka Abe, Arthur H. Williams
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Category: Drama, Classics, Classics, Special Interest
Studio: Kino Video
Subtitles:
[None]
Length:
159 mins

 
 

 

Cecil B. DeMille: Challenging The Limits Of Screen Sexuality In The Silent Era

In the silent era, Cecil B. DeMille stood at the forefront of Hollywood directors, a visual stylist who created fashionable fables of women caught in tempests of temptation.

Accompanied by a lively score by the Alloy Orchestra, Manslaughter stars Leatrice Joy as a pampered debutante who is forced to confront her irresponsible lifestyle when she causes the death of a traffic cop.To emphasize the debauchery of the Jazz Age elite, DeMille interwove scenes of champagne-soaked parties and Roman orgies, a device that served as a stern warning (while providing a titillating spectacle) to the wayward youth of America.

Mixed messages also abound in The Cheat, in which a society woman (Fannie Ward) allows a wealthy Burmese trader (Sessue Hayakawa) to settle a debt for her, not realizing that in exchange he intends to brand her flesh as his own.Highly influential for its dramatic low-key lighting and its frank depiction of extra-marital intrigue, The Cheat tapped into a vein of post-Victorian female masochism, eroticism and Orientalism of the day, exploring the taboo desire to be forcefully seduced and possessed by a man of another (as in Rudolph Valentino's Sheik films several years later).