Trappola d'amore

Ah, a first sound film. I love these things.

I don't know the actual history of The Love Trap, whether the sudden popularity of The Jazz Singer's technology happened at a point where they stopped production to transition to sound, or if they had already finished production only to send it back to change part of it for release (I would guess the former, to be honest). However, whichever way it happened, it's obvious that there's a certain rushed quality to it, buoyed by a lot of William Wyler's skill as a filmmaker that he transitions well to the sound era while finding a way to keep this new found dialogue thing to work appropriately. Essentially, the final third of the film, the part in sound, looks like it would fit in with almost any pre-Code Hollywood film. It may not be the surprisingly raucous and technologically impressive presentation of the technology that Ernst Lubitsch managed in The Love Parade, but it's much more accomplished than either Ford's The Black Watch or Hitchcock's part-talkie, Blackmail.

Speaking of Blackmail, that film gets attention because of one moment (one very good, inventive moment) where the main character hears only the word knife on the soundtrack. It's a great little moment, but the rest of the film's sound sequences are boring, flat demonstrations of blithe nonsense masquerading as dialogue. That's not the case here, but I'll get to the sound in a minute.

First, the story.

Evelyn (Laura La Plante) is a chorus girl who gets fired from her job on the night she needs to pay rent. Convinced to go to a rich party by her friend Bunny (Jocelyn Lee), she meets two men. The first is Judge Harrington (Norman Trevor), a stuffy older man uninterested in her playful attitude, and the second is Guy (Robert Ellis), a well-respected young man of the elite who does a few tricks to get Evelyn up to his bedroom and undressed. She is not pleased and storms out, all while Judge Harrington watches in amazement, getting the exact wrong impression about Evelyn, her behavior, and Guy's guilt in the matter. That would be the end of it if Evelyn weren't to go home to find all of her things on the streetcorner, having been evicted from her apartment. When it begins to rain, a young man riding by in a cab, Paul (Neil Hamilton), sees her plight, takes pity on her, and hires three more cabs to carry all of her stuff away. Where? Just away. Taking a step back, it seems a bit weird and almost sinister, but Paul is a good guy. When the four cabs stop in the middle of nowhere, insisting on getting paid, they throw everything out, even when Paul pays up with a few hundred dollars (a solid hundred short).

Now, this film is primarily a comedy, and this section is, at best, lightly amusing. There are shots here and there that elicit a good little chuckle, but the whole thing about just driving away with her, getting the cab driver to make a sharp turn so Evelyn falls in Paul's arms, and then just being left in the countryside is so odd and borderline dangerous without a real relief from that danger that it prevents it from being really funny, I think. I was slightly amused by what was going on, but I felt like comedy was simply not Wyler's strong suit, that his comic sensibilities were simply not tight enough or funny enough to pull off a comedy.

Then, at about the halfway point, it turns more into a drama, and I think the film regains its feet a bit. It will take those feet and dance a jig by the end, but the scenes where Paul introduces his new bride to his mother and sister are carried almost entirely by La Plante who, besides having a bright and attractive smile, gives a surprisingly subtle performance, especially in moments where she's more melancholic or sad, the rejection by her new in-laws providing her with the perfect opportunity for that. Once we discover that Judge Harrington is actually Paul's uncle, though, things go dour. Invited to dinner the next night, none of the family shows up, offering up an excuse that Paul's mother is too sick to attend.

It's here where the sound suddenly gets introduced, and it's at the moment where the film fully drops its comedic senses in favor of more dramatic ones. The first major scene with sound has no soundtrack but the sound captured on stage (a marked contrast to the generally happier score written by Joseph Cherniavsky). It's a tightly written dialogue scene of anger, disappointment, and threats. The story moves on as Bunny brings a host of people, including Guy, over to Evelyn's house to cheer her up, igniting a party that Paul and family walk in on, further creating a terrible impression. And then we get to the final ten minutes of the film, an escalating comic sequence involving only Evelyn and Judge Harrington that brings back a series of setups from earlier in the film, including how Guy tried to seduce Evelyn in the film's first scenes. It's really funny.

The second half of the film is stronger than the first. Wyler brings his expert eye to the film from the start, including some very nice shots of a chorus line's legs or the rear trio of cab drivers getting out from their cars at the same time, but the comic sensibilities fall a bit flat in that first section. It really comes much more alive in the second after Eve and Paul get married, and especially when the sound gets introduced. The final major sequence between Evelyn and the Judge is kind of hilarious, and because it relies on so much of what was built into the narrative beforehand, it helps carry the film as a whole. My only real complaint about the ending is a sudden turn around with Paul that seems to come out of nowhere. Giving him a moment earlier where he expresses distrust of Guy, at least, might have done something to make it feel less random.

The Love Trap is William Wyler's first sound film, and it's an accomplished one. He doesn't make a weird directing choice like Ford, and he doesn't rely on inane dialogue like Hitchcock, choosing instead to make what would essentially become a pretty standard pre-Code finale to a film from a technical point of view. It also ends up being a small delight, anchored by a winning performance from Laura La Plante, and another point in Wyler's favor as a testament to his talent.

The plot of this deceptively overlooked little trifle is the usual nonsense about a sweet young lass whose path crosses that of one of those personable young millionaires with entirely honourable intentions you find behind every corner in the silents, only to be entirely falsely suspected of being a gold-digging little hussy by his disapproving family. But 'The Love Trap' proves fascinating historically both as a relic of the "part-talkie" era and for its adroit staging by the up-and-coming young William Wyler feeling his way towards his mature style.

The first two thirds of this fluff has attractive performances in the leads by Laura La Plante and Neil Hamilton, while Wyler is already visibly attempting to find ways of extending the boundaries of the cinema screen through frequent use of pans and attempts at composition in depth. In his talkies Wyler abandoned the pans, which tend to jar at times, but with the great Gregg Toland behind the camera eventually came second only to Orson Welles as the 1940s' master of deep focus composition in 'The Best Years of Our Lives' (1946), which veteran cameraman Gilbert Warrenton had done his best to achieve in 'The Love Trap' with the limited resources then at his disposal.

Then suddenly everybody starts talking! The early scenes had all carried a Vitaphone soundtrack, and 'The Love Trap' had evidently started life as a silent, since there are scenes in which people speak dialogue which the makers haven't bothered to caption, as they'd presumably decided the film was going to go into release as a part-talkie and thus elected to keep titles to the minimum in scenes where the audience would be able to get the gist without them.

At this point the film seems on the verge of turning all serious on us, but happily opts instead for saucy pre-Code farce, in which Miss La Plante - mostly dressed only in her scanties - effortlessly and charmingly leaps the daunting hurdle of suddenly starring in a talkie.

A real surprise and a delight, that is, if you enjoy the Cinderella stories of the 1920s. I always do, so long as they are nicely played, and THE LOVE TRAP has enough distinction to recommend it very highly. Charming and entertaining as a fluid silent, there are many marvelous visual touches, particularly the choreography involving synchronized taxi cabs. Unexpectedly, THE LOVE TRAP retains this graceful pace when the picture begins talking at about the half-way point. The second half is so engaging one really does forget that the first half was such a terrific silent picture. Star Laura La Plante is her wonderful, pert, pretty self, effortlessly carrying the silent style with a seemless transition into the heroine speaking the rest of her role. Of particular note and enjoyment is the handsome leading man, the future Commissioner Gordon on TV's BATMAN, Neil Hamilton. Though called upon to behave like a first rate schmoo at one point during the plot, Hamilton is a first rate smooth comedian, both silent and talking. For being a relatively innocuous "Cinderella" tale, THE LOVE TRAP packs in some fun little moments of sexual intrigue, such as when the snootie sister, Rita La Roy, tells the family she cannot be bothered with La Plante's sordid situation, and as the family leaves, she climbs the stairs, soon followed by a slyly winking butler.

The Love Trap is one of a many "part-talkies" that were produced during the transition period between the silent and sound eras. As sound was still relatively expensive and still excitingly new, the talkie segment in these features was usually a gimmick for the final scenes, not necessarily adding or taking away anything from the picture, but helping to draw the crowds. Today these pictures provide us with a chance to see directly the contrast between the final days of silent cinema and the first faltering steps of the talkies.

The director here is William Wyler, shooting one of his earliest full-length features. Wyler would later have the distinction of directing more Oscar-nominated acting performances than anyone else (thirty-three), a record still held by him today. In particular, he had a reputation for coaxing fine performances from actors who never showed talent anywhere else. Laura La Plante was not an especially distinguished actress, yet here she is first class. Perhaps the most crucial thing a director can do to help their cast, other than good coaching, is simply giving them time and space to act, and this is precisely what Wyler does for La Plante. In the opening scenes, when she is fired from the chorus line and flees to her dressing room, she is held for a few moments in mid-shot, forcing the audience to focus on her emoting. The scene in which she is kicked out on the street along with all her furniture could easily have been played for laughs, but again the camera concentrates on La Plante, and her expression is painfully real.

This generous manner of filming the leading lady, and the commendable performance it captures, have a wider impact on the picture as a whole. Firstly, it helps bring out the story visually by subtly yet convincingly bringing out the character's thoughts and feelings – something which is complimented by the relatively low frequency of intertitles. Furthermore, Wyler avoids the trap of many male directors when shooting a story where a woman is the protagonist, which is to focus too much on the lead man, and show us his point of view rather than hers. Instead he makes it absolutely clear that this is her story, not Neil Hamilton's. Finally, by making the emotions of the main character appear real, and forcing the audience to take notice of them, he elevates The Love Trap above the simple romcom that it is on paper. It's just a shame there isn't quite enough substance to the screenplay for this to pay off.

The talkie section of The Love Trap begins, ironically, with several seconds of silence as Hamilton confronts his family. This adds dramatic weight to the moment, and gives more impact to the dialogue when it begins. The power of silent moments had, again ironically, never been realised in the silent era as pictures had a continual musical backing. The sound scenes here still retain the flow, style and strong performances of the rest of the picture, and do not stand out as being awkward, as early talkies often were.

By their very nature, the part-talkies were usually potboilers, since by now all the more prestigious picture would be all-talking. However, thanks in no small part to Wyler's sensitive direction, The Love Trap is well above the average. Laura La Plante's career would begin to peter out soon after, and Neil Hamilton wound up as a supporting player in numerous TV series, but here they are both excellent. Wyler himself would go on to win three Academy Awards, and direct some of the greatest stars of Hollywood's golden age in the greatest performances of their career.

"Love Trap" offers a very slight - and very dated - story (the popular in those days "rich can't marry poor" trope), which moves very slowly, but it is a fascinating film from a technical perspective: the transition (at around the 45-minute mark) from a silent with a synchronized score and sound effects to a full-blown talkie is surprisingly smooth. The expressive Laura La Plante has an almost Chaplinesque quality in the dramatic sections, but she shines more in the final comedic segment, where she gets to turn the tables on a stuffy judge. She also strikes one great pose when she pretends to yawn at one point. **1/2 out of 4.