The Betrayer

Plot

Australian Stephen Manners (Cyril Mackay) travels to New Zealand and falls in love with a Māori girl. He goes home and she dies giving birth to their daughter, Iwa. Iwa is raised by her grandfather Hauraki (Mita), who explains to Manners what happens when he returns to New Zealand twenty years later. Manners decides to take Iwa (now played by Stella Southern) back to Sydney, Australia, but doesn't tell her that he is her father.

Travelling with Manners is John Barris (John Cosgrove), who Hauraki tells on his deathbed that Iwa's real father actually is a missionary, not Manners. Barris keeps this information to himself and makes advances on Iwa, which are stopped by Manners.

Iwa tells Manners she is in love with him, so Manner explains he is her father and she returns to Rotarua. Barris' wife (Bernice Vere) tells Manners the truth so he returns to New Zealand and is reunited with Iwa, this time as a romantic couple.

Cast

Production

The film was short on location in Rotorua and Auckland, New Zealand, at Coogee Beach and the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney. The cast and crew amounted to about twelve people. Among them was Rudall Hayward who Smith hired as his assistant and later went on to become one of New Zealand's most prolific directors.

Most stories of inter-racial romance at this time ended unhappily but this one finished with a white man marrying a Māori woman.

Release

The movie was originally entitled Our Bit o' the World but this was changed out of fear audiences would think it was a travelogue.

In 1922, Smith re-edited the film for the British market, adding a racecourse scene and a chase between a car and a train, probably taken from his earlier movie Desert Gold (1919). He retitled the movie The Maid of Maoriland, a title under which the film was re-released in Australia.