Name: Toronto Silent Film Festival: Mantrap
Start: 2025-04-12T13:30:00-04:00
Location: Revue Cinema

A liberated city gal creates havoc in a Western Canadian backwater when she exercises her right to flirt with any man she chooses, wedding ring be damned!
The film's opening shots foretell the shape (and power) of things to come. The shape is the curve of a young woman's legs in silk stockings. The power-well all those men will have to figure out how to deal with the vivacious Clara Bow.
The brilliantly adapted screenplay (from the definitely not feminist novel by Sinclair Lewis) is loaded with humour, charm, and sexual energy, directed with a deft touch by Victor Fleming and photographed by James Wong Howe.
This is definitely a "western with a Twist!" Poor divorce lawyer is at his wits end dealing with all his women clients--he needs a break! In walks E Wesson Woodbury (played to perfection by Eugene Pallette) who suggests a manly retreat into the wilderness--wash those women right out of your hair!
Meanwhile in Mantrap Manitoba (sorry everybody, it’s a mythical place that only exists in this film and in a reverse of the usual, USA locations stand in for Canada), Joe (veteran scene stealer Ernst Torrence) is lamenting to the local Mountie (there’s always a Mountie in Canada it seems) about the lack of local feminine charms. The Mountie, always at ready to help, suggests a trip to the big city of Minneapolis (really?) to get an eyeful of the charms of silk stockinged legs and the ladies attached to them.
So big manly galoot Joe arrives in the big city and goes for a manicure, as one does in civilized society, and in walks manicurist Alverna (Clara Bow) to do the deed. Need we say more? No more spoilers!
The result is still as fresh and witty as it was in 1926. They loved it then and so will you for its sophisticated play on expectations.
Bonus: short travelogues from out west.
Live scored by Tania Gill
Single tickets available or make it part of a Saturday Pass (with Last Command) or a Festival Pass (April 11-13)