AustLit

On Armistic Day, four people gather in General Gresham's living room for the two minutes' silence. As the two minutes pass, each of the four remember their own experiences of World War I.

General Gresham recalls making a blunder that cost his men their lives.

His grandchildren's French governess, Marie, remembers her lover Pierre's rejection of her, when he returned from the war to find that she had had a child, after being raped by a German officer.

His charwoman, Mrs Trott, thinks of when she heard that her son had been killed in action.

His butler James remembers his years of homelessness on the Thames embankment, during which period he witness the suicide of an ex-soldier.

A crime caper and romance, The Cheaters was the third film by the McDonagh sisters, Paulette, Phyllis, and Isabelle.

Though it was originally made as a silent film, sound was added to three sections before the film was entered for the 1930 Commonwealth Film Prize. Unsuccessful in the competition, it premiered in Sydney cinemas in mid-1930.

Contemporary reviews criticised the film for having 'have slavishly copied American models. Instead of striving to give their work originality, the Americanisms, "big boy," "dame," and '"gangster," creep into the captions' and point out that, overall, the film

'suffers from a poor, badly-told story. Especially toward the end, absurdities spring up in battalions. The piece of dialogue that brings the picture to a close is an extreme example of bathos. It would surely be easy enough to write such dialogue in the modern spirit, instead of in the bombastically sentimental style of out-worn melodrama.'

Source

'Australian Film. "The Cheaters"', Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 1930, p.8.

Cherry Carson falls in love with Peter Lawton–but Cherry's criminal father is under investigation by Peter's father, the Attorney General. Carson skips town, taking Cherry with him. A year later, Peter stumbles across Cherry, selling flowers to tourists in a remote town as a means of supporting her alcoholic father, and Carson's death of a heart attack leaves the two free to marry.

'Miss Paulette McDonagh took as her theme the story of a young man's love and the opposition that was born in the breast of his father when he learnt that the lady in question was a professional dancer. The lady rejected her suitor, however, when she found that her prospective father in law, who was a "millionaire" (another American touch, by the way), would cut off his son without even the proverbial shilling. She accepted instead a cheque which was apparently made out for £300. This should have cured Barry Manton of his penchant for dancing girls: but it did not. He first went to the dogs, then became a hero of fisticuffs in a low dive in Pyrmont, or the Rocks area, in defence of the professional dancer of the place who had attracted the favourable notice of the proprietor. This won for him the lady's heart, though he did not know it. They joined forces, so to speak, became a mutual protection society of two by marriage. They each learned to love the other more than life itself but as neither disclosed the fact much happened to mar their happiness.'

Source:

'Those Who Love', Brisbane Courier, 15 March 1927, p.18.