In DeMille’s “The Cheat”
The art is a magical invention of the mankind, although it is possible to say that the art has invented a human being in some strange way too – that human with a delicate vision of the beauty and with fascinating creative abilities. The cinematography is one of the greatest arts. However, it is important to note the fact that the modern cinematography has turned into a huge commercial business (but not the whole, of course).
It is difficult to impress a contemporary representative of our consumer society because he is surrounded by the entertainment business everywhere. However, the movies that were filmed by great world-famous directors in the early 20th century captivate the imagination even of the pampered modern person. The filmmaking process seems to be something quite simple and fun for many people, but in the reality it is a highly complex process, in which everyone has to do his job responsibly and faultlessly.
Work of the movie director is not easy, but it’s very interesting, of course! After all, such individuals as filmmakers are true masters, who create unforgettable characters, amazing and sometimes very unusual worlds of great feelings and passions. If a filmmaker wants to achieve a success in the cinematography, he has to be a real individualist. The best directors do what they want to do and overstep all the rules and laws on the way to realization of their ideas.
Among the talented film directors the honorable place belongs to Cecil Blount DeMille - a mega-star of the American cinema during its Golden Age. Cecil B. DeMille, who became famous thanks to the westerns and romantic movies, later filmed such biblical epics as "The Ten Commandments" (1924). Despite of the large number of scenes of debauchery and violence, these movies were lucky to avoid the censorship, because sin was punished and virtue was rewarded there.
DeMille’s style was extremely expressive and even pompous sometimes. So, he differed from the sophisticated and elegant styles of such movie directors as Ernst Lubitsch and Erich von Stroheim. Also it should be noted that everyone, who began a career in the film industry at that time, has found himself in the uncharted territory; but DeMille had gone much further than a lot of his talented colleagues. Moreover, he became a man, who is known as the father of Hollywood (or at least one of these great fathers).
It is difficult to be a good filmmaker and an innovator at the same time, but the master of the American cinematography DeMille succeeded. He is considered to be one of the first Western film directors (if not the first), who began to use artificial lights, using new developments in the lighting (while shooting “The Warrens of Virginia”).
DeMille and his lighting designer, Wilfred Buckland, had both been trained by Broadway producer, David Belasco, who was known for his amazing lighting techniques. Then Cecil B. De Mille explained that he borrowed some portable spotlights from the Mason Opera House in downtown Los Angeles and has begun to make shadows, where shadows would appear in the nature. ("Cecil B. DeMille's Legacy.")
Reaction to the innovation has been mixed. For example, DeMille’s business partner Sam Goldwyn worried that the audience would not understand this innovation. He feared that the exhibitors would pay only half the price for the movie because they would see only half an actor’s face! However, Cecil said that it was the Rembrandt lighting. After all, world-famous Dutch artist had become an innovator too, but in painting. Rembrandt fascinated his contemporaries by great ability to paint a human being, precisely portraying not simply the face of person, but also the most hidden human feelings and emotions.
At the beginning of his career, Cecil DeMille has decided to use the lighting effects that he liked to use in the theater, in particular, contrasting illumination of the face. Most of the producers negatively react to this innovation. However, they soon changed their aversion to admiration.
Furthermore, a lot of DeMille’s findings have become the standard for others. For example, he began to list the names of the members of a film crew, to use real decorations instead of the paintings, and of course, Cecil started using the artificial lighting to emphasize some essential details in his movies.
A spectacular play of lights and shadows has attracted the attention of numerous producers and operators of the new generation of the silent cinema. They have started using powerful lamps (searchlights) to make large streams of light that created expressive shadows from the people and different objects. Also Expressionism, which was the dominant force among the visual arts in the 1910s-1920s, influenced the cinematography too.
Cecil Blount DeMille can be called an astute filmmaker because he often filmed melodramas with the moral content, such as "The Cheat" (1915), not forgetting that the public wants to see on the screen such things as sex, sins, death, and the life of high society.
The New York Times called "The Cheat" a "sensational trash" and "an old-fashioned melodrama." However, it was definitely a minority opinion. The New York Dramatic Mirror said that “The Cheat” was well conceived, well written, carefully produced, and extremely well-acted movie. ("The Cheat Commentary.")
At the same a lot of the critics have written that skillful play of lights and shadows in "The Cheat" was wonderful. However, the movie hasn’t a great box-office success in the USA; despite its commercial success in the France: the widespread use of arc lamps on film sets amazed the French audience.
So, the audience assessed the film in different ways; but the movie definitely aroused a lot of the interest; and that's very good, because it is much worse if the film remain unnoticed.
The Rembrandt lighting gave a special magnificence to DeMille’s “The Cheat”. It seems that even the shadows have become actors, giving the film a special mystical charm. So, the light was working on the American master, forcing the audience to swoon with admiration. When you watch this masterpiece of cinematography it seems that you're peeping through the curtains into the intimate and terrible scenes from the lives of the people. Everything is very realistic.
The characters’ internal, psychological struggles were represented via strange visual language, for example, the shadows of prison bars over Edith and Jack in the scene before Jack’s trial, or when the low key lighting shows us that Arakau, surrounded in smoke and darkness, is a dangerous person. Of all of DeMille’s films, “The Cheat” is perhaps the most beautifully shot. Scenes of this movie are elegant, but at the same time they’re horrifying: cold hatred and violence are living their private enigmatic lives there.
At first filmmakers were using the sunlight, but by 1905 they had started to explore the possibilities of the artificial light. In the 20th century everything was developing quite quickly; and pretty soon, the other filmmakers began to use the innovations of the Rembrandt lighting too.
For example, these innovations can be seen in the films of Sergei Eisenstein (a Soviet film director and film theorist), who perfectly understood and used the effects of light contrasts and mystique of the shadows. This play of light and shade is especially amazing in the film "Ivan the Terrible", where the huge shadows are moving on the walls and ceilings, creating a premonition of something terrible. Moreover, Sergei Eisenstein has a lot of world-famous followers, and Alfred Hitchcock is considered to be the most famous of them.
The shadows and spectacular lighting are typical for the numerous horror films: the shadow, which is suddenly falling on the pages of the book, murderer's hand on the background of walls, etc. Alfred Hitchcock in the famous murder scene in the movie "Psycho" shows only a dark silhouette of the killer. Such scenes were made to frighten the audience, of course.
Orson Welles is an American film director, whose films differ by inventiveness in the technical solutions. A characteristic feature of this filmmaker was the use of mirror reflections in the movies. The role of Orson Welles can hardly be overestimated in the history of the cinematography. He is one of the most brilliant filmmakers that ever existed. Other movie director - D. W. Griffith began to use the lighting primarily for close-ups of the various objects and actors’ faces. Filmmakers rarely used close-ups before.
The wide dissemination of the Rembrandt lighting in the world cinematography proved to the public that the cinema is not just an entertainment, but it’s a new developing form of art. The German cinema played a significant role in the development of the cinematography too, for example, silent horror film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer in 1920. The scenery in this movie was extremely unrealistic: straight lines are broken and drawn to the ground, furnishings are implausible, and faces of the people are similar to the masks In another famous German Expressionist horror film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” directed by F. W. Murnau in 1922, the magic surreal atmosphere was created via the disturbing lighting and the same dramatic contrasts of lights and shades.
Finally, the most prominent German director of that time, whose direct influence in the cinematography is felt till now, was Fritz Lang. In such films as “The Destiny” (1921), “The Nibelungs” (1924), and especially in the expressionist epic science-fiction drama “Metropolis” (1927), the filmmaker developed every detail of the image, the play of contrasts and shadows so carefully and accurately, so that even the footages from this movie can compete with the famous painting of that period of time.
So, the art of cinema has become very important for humankind. Moreover, the cinematography has very rich and interesting history. The invention of the so-called Rembrandt lighting was an important moment in the development of the cinema. The first filmmaker, who introduced this term and of course the technique of lighting, was Cecil Blount DeMille – one of the greatest American film directors. His movie “The Cheat” (1915) is a great example of the skillful use of lighting in the cinematography. Consequently, a lot of his contemporaries began to experiment with the Rembrandt lighting, transforming the movies into masterpieces.
Works cited:
"Cecil B. DeMille's Legacy." Cecil B. DeMille's Legacy. Web. 01 Mar. 2016. <http://www.cecilbdemille.com/legacy.html>.
"The Cheat Commentary." The Cheat Commentary. Web. 01 Mar. 2016. <http://www.silentsaregolden.com/featurefolder4/cheatcommentary.html>.
