Sunday 3 April 2011

Wow Wow Bow!


"Mantrap" is a 1926 movie directed by the famous Victor Fleming ("Wizard of Oz"..."Gone With the Wind"...) and featuring a blinding performance from Clara Bow. It's not a great film but it is a very entertaining one. Percy Marmont is the jaded lawyer Ralph Prescott who heads to the hills to fish and clear his mind only to find confusion in the form of Clara's Alverna - a city girl who has rashly married the solid, sincere but very square, Joe Easter (Ernest Torrence).

Both men struggle to find an arrangement with the flighty, flirty Alverna and it's unclear until the very end which way she'll turn and where she's best placed: the city or the country.

It's one of the films that best explains the massive appeal of Clara Bow and whilst everyone seems a little miss-cast around her and Alverna's own motivations are a little hard to credit, she makes the absolute most of things and pulls you along throughout with energy and true wit.

You can trap it here (along with "Our Dancing Mothers").


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