LGM Film Club, Part 426: Mantrap

Silent films can be incredibly entertaining and not just the classic comedies. A great starting point is Victor Fleming’s 1926 film Mantrap, starring Clara Bow as a woman on the hustle surrounded by some pretty dumb guys. This is actually a Sinclair Lewis adaptation, evidently of one of his worst and most misogynist books. I haven’t read it. But the film takes a different tack. Clara Bow is working a barber shop in the city and probably doing, uh, other work on the side, when she meets Ernest Torrence, best known as the father in Steamboat Bill, Jr. He runs a cabin on a lake in Canada. They marry for some reason but here comes Percy Marmont, playing an advertising executive who just wants to get away from women. Bow now sets her sights on him, Ridiculousness largely results.

The film has a horrible ending, completely selling out what made it good, which was Bow’s free and easy sexuality and looking out for herself around doofus men. But outside of those last 3 minutes, it’s really a very good film. Fleming of course went on to direct Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.