Australian
Screen

Clip description

Paula Marsh (Isabel McDonagh billed as 'Marie Lorraine’) prepares for an evening at the Hotel Plaza. In the hotel dining room she takes her first look at society matron Mrs Nash (Nellie McNiven) wearing the pearls her father has asked her to steal. Count Bachmann introduces Paula to Lee Travers (Josef Bambach), after which Paula and Lee drive into the countryside.

Note: This clip has been pillarboxed to show the maximum amount of the full frame.

Curator’s notes

The audio for these scenes – complete with incidental conversation, an admiring sigh, dinner table conversation and dance band music – contain the most naturalistic and engaging use of sound in what survives of this version of The Cheaters. The jazz music creates atmosphere and unity for the dining room sequence. Its combination of brass and violins provides a bridge between originally silent and newly recorded dialogue footage while also providing a sense of the day-to-day for what is essentially a suspense piece in which Paula strives to mask her interest in Mrs Nash’s pearls. The way in which this scene’s music is mixed with dialogue and sound effects is rare for a sound film of 1930–31, a period when the technology of sound mixing was in its infancy. The orchestral music that accompanies the lovers’ car journey is lushly romantic in a way common to American films of the late 1920s, its surging idealism symbolising the central characters’ new-found love as they move through bushland.