Customer Reviews

Mantrap

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Mantrap, by Sinclair Lewis, seems like a literary lark, the author relaxing a bit after the acclaimed Main Street, Babbitt and Arrowsmith, and during the writing of Elmer Gantry. Lewis was a very popular author in 1926, and this novel became a hot movie property, soon earmarked for flapper Clara Bow: the film right before she became the "It Girl." Lewis called it "a straight, out-and-out romance of an unspoiled country...the most captivating love and adventure story I have ever conceived or told" (Michael Sragow's biography of Victor Fleming p. 112) but director Fleming saw the story as something quite different, a new kind of sex comedy.

Like all Lewis' novels, it incorporated elements of cultural commentary, in this case, that of a "social climber" the manicurist, Alverna, who thinks she is marrying up and finds herself keeping house in the Canadian backwoods. But, the love triangle between the incorrigible flirt, the rough-hewn backwoodsman and the effete city divorce lawyer who has sworn off women, is unusual enough to confound reader and audience expectations, who may not know how they want the story resolved.

The adaptation is an excellent distillation of the novel, previously serialized in a magazine. Some of the most humorous written passages, which involve the outfitting of two city men at the 1920s version of REI, and being talked into more and more useless gear, is only hinted at in a few brief shots in the film. Bow softens Alverna's hard-boiled character with her unique snap and sparkle.

Lewis's book is not one of his major works, but is still a delightful read, especially when complementing a viewing of the film version of Mantrap (1926) starring Clara Bow, Ernest Torrence and Percy Marmot.