As the ace director in the mid-1910s for Famous Players-Lasky, a company he had a hand in creating, DeMille was a crucial figure in the early development of the classic Hollywood narrative filmmaking style. Although less critically revered than D.W. Griffith, DeMille actually played a more important role in shaping the structure of the Hollywood system.One of DeMille's most influential films of the 1910s was "The Cheat". Released the same year (1915) as "The Birth of a Nation", "The Cheat" was instrumental in developing the rules of classic Hollywood filmmaking. This melodrama is the story of
