Own it:
|
With: Lon Chaney, Alan Hale, Dagmar Godowsky, Stanley Goethals, Irene Rich, Spottiswoode Aitken, Herbert Standing, Frank Campeau, Dick Sutherland, Lon Chaney Jr.
|
Written by: Lon Chaney, Lucien Hubbard, George C. Hull, Irving Thalberg
|
Directed by: Robert Thornby
|
MPAA Rating: NR
|
Running Time: 53
|
|
Date: 05/09/1922
|
|
|
|
Yosemite Ho
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Lon Chaney plays Gaspard, a French Canadian miner whose wild French accent is spelled out phonetically in the subtitles. (A slight annoyance.) He's simple and good, so it's no surprise when the ruthless Benson (Alan Hale) not only legally steals Gaspard's family mine, but also his girl, Thalie (Dagmar Godowsky). Years later, he plots his revenge and gets Benson sent to prison for a murder that he, Gaspard, arranged. But then Gaspard winds up raising Benson and Thalie's son (Stanley Goethals), growing to love him and vowing to keep him if (and when) Benson ever returns. This melodrama, no doubt inspired in part by the success of Chaplin's The Kid, is pretty overwrought; it demonstrates just what Chaplin did right. At the time critic/poet Carl Sandburg wrote "It is a better than average movie. Some of its moments attain high spot film drama. Then it halts. At that, the director may have known a strong knit story could have been made — but the time limit for the making of the movie was up." Nonetheless, The Trap is notable for some beautiful period cinematography shot in Yosemite (as well as the first, brief screen appearance of Chaney's son Lon Chaney Jr.), and it's best seen on Kino Lorber's 2023 Blu-ray release of a 4K restoration. It includes new music by Kevin Lax, a one-reel Western featuring Chaney (By the Sun's Rays, from 1914), and the 1996 documentary Lon Chaney: Behind the Mask.
|
