I'm one of those people that, if a movie is still bad after twenty minutes, I will shut it off, walk away, and never look back. Once it passes that point, having managed to hold my interest, a movie is generally pretty safe; I'll watch to the end.
NEVER will I shut off or walk out on a good movie without a life-or-death reason.
Well, the saying "never say never" is applicable here. There was a scene in the first third of THE TRAP that made me shut it off, in spite of the fact that I was completely captivated. I won't say what it was, of course, but suffice it to say it made me miserable; it took me a couple of months to come back to it.
The movie is set in the early wilderness of Canadian British Columbia. It begins at a small settlement, and French Canadian Fur trapper Jean La Bête, played by the rugged Oliver Reed, has come from his cabin in the wilderness in his canoe to sell furs and buy supplies. La Bête is in no way the type of man for this kind of (relatively)polite setting; having spent much of his life in solitude, he hasn't been socialised in the ways of people. He's loud, aggressive, physically rough, and his sense of personal boundaries is completely nonexistent. I liked him from the first frame. Besides selling his goods, he's come to collect the money that the settlement's main trader has been keeping for him from their past business. This is something that the trader's wife does not like. She's had her eye on that money as a way to escape to 'civilisation' (which at that time and place meant San Fransisco), where a genteel lady could live 'properly'. In a cruel and selfish move, she offers her mute foster child(named Eve...appropriate for the Eden-like world in which they live) to the mate-less wild man, in exchange for the money. Against the girl's wishes, La Bête accepts, and he drags her kicking and flailing onto his canoe...
...off into the vast wilderness they go...
NEVER will I shut off or walk out on a good movie without a life-or-death reason.
Well, the saying "never say never" is applicable here. There was a scene in the first third of THE TRAP that made me shut it off, in spite of the fact that I was completely captivated. I won't say what it was, of course, but suffice it to say it made me miserable; it took me a couple of months to come back to it.
The movie is set in the early wilderness of Canadian British Columbia. It begins at a small settlement, and French Canadian Fur trapper Jean La Bête, played by the rugged Oliver Reed, has come from his cabin in the wilderness in his canoe to sell furs and buy supplies. La Bête is in no way the type of man for this kind of (relatively)polite setting; having spent much of his life in solitude, he hasn't been socialised in the ways of people. He's loud, aggressive, physically rough, and his sense of personal boundaries is completely nonexistent. I liked him from the first frame. Besides selling his goods, he's come to collect the money that the settlement's main trader has been keeping for him from their past business. This is something that the trader's wife does not like. She's had her eye on that money as a way to escape to 'civilisation' (which at that time and place meant San Fransisco), where a genteel lady could live 'properly'. In a cruel and selfish move, she offers her mute foster child(named Eve...appropriate for the Eden-like world in which they live) to the mate-less wild man, in exchange for the money. Against the girl's wishes, La Bête accepts, and he drags her kicking and flailing onto his canoe...
...off into the vast wilderness they go...
THE TRAP features Oliver Reed in his prime, the perfect guy for the part of a wild, uncivilised, Quebecois trapper. I've been nudged toward Reed's movies for years, so when I found out that he had done a Mountain-man type picture (a fave genre of mine), I was all over it! I was blown away here; Reed's size and masculinity really brought this rough brute to life, and he made a sympathetic person out of what could have been simply a character...if that makes any sense at all. Rita Tushingham, who plays the mute Eve, is wonderful; she brings a dignity as big as the wild land she lives in, and her character is brave and tough without trying to out-macho Reed (something so common in today's terrible actresses).
The relationship that these two people have is complicated. It has it's foundations in cruelty and injustice, but the deep humanity they have as individuals brings something cautiously beautiful from the situation. Frankly, I think many of our more prissy 'modern' people would be deeply offended by the whole movie. Life isn't pretty, but beautiful things do come from it. THE TRAP is the same way.
You have to hunt it down...it's amazing.
The relationship that these two people have is complicated. It has it's foundations in cruelty and injustice, but the deep humanity they have as individuals brings something cautiously beautiful from the situation. Frankly, I think many of our more prissy 'modern' people would be deeply offended by the whole movie. Life isn't pretty, but beautiful things do come from it. THE TRAP is the same way.
You have to hunt it down...it's amazing.
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