The Trap (1966 film)

The Trap is a 1966 British-Canadian adventure western film directed by Sidney Hayers and starring Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham. Shot in the wilderness of the Canadian province of British Columbia, the film is an unusual love story about a rough trapper and a mute orphan girl.

Plot
French-Canadian fur trapper Jean La Bête paddles his canoe through wild water towards the settlement in order to sell a load of furs. At the settlement, a steamboat is landing and the Trader and his foster-child Eve arrive at the seaport to fetch mail and consumer goods. The trader explains to Eve that the ship brings "Jailbirds ... from the east" and that "their husbands-to-be had bailed them out and paid their fines and their passages with a guarantee of marriage". Later, the captain is auctioning one of those women because her husband-to-be has died in the meantime. Jean La Bête decides to take his chance to buy the wife but he makes his bid too late.

Two Native Americans, Yellow Dog and No Name, have told the Trader that La Bête is dead. The Trader, heavily in debt, has spent money he owes La Bête so that when La Bête calls to collect his dues, the trader has to use his own savings, to the fury of his wife. Next day, the trader's wife, to compensate for the loss of her savings, seizes the opportunity to offer her foster-child for a thousand dollars to the simple-minded, rough-cut trapper. She praises the qualities of the shy girl and explains, that her inability to speak is caused from the shock she suffered when she had to witness how her parents were barbarously murdered several years ago.

La Bête finally agrees to buy the mute girl and takes her against her will into the wilderness of British Columbia. Here the strange couple start a difficult relationship characterised by mistrust and Eve's fear and dislike of the trapper. Eve vehemently rejects the advances of the gruff trapper. La Bête takes her hunting and acquaints her with the beauty and the dangers of the wilderness but here, as well, he fails to win her trust. Eve defends herself from his advances with a knife.

One day, on checking his traps for caught animals, La Bête is threatened by a cougar. He shoots the cat but inadvertently gets his foot into his own bear trap. Badly injured, he tries to drag himself back to his hut, hunted by famished wolves. Eve is waiting at the cabin and hears the distant howling of the wolves approaching the hut. She takes a gun and sets out in search for La Bête; together they get rid of the wolf pack. La Bête's lower left leg is broken, so he asks Eve to bring the medicine man from the next Indian village, a two days trip away. The Canadian winter has already come, so Eve puts on her snowshoes and starts a long, arduous walk over snow-covered hilltops. She finally reaches the village only to find it deserted.

Returning empty-handed, Eve finds La Bête already suffering from sepsis (blood poisoning). Having no time to lose, he urges the terrified girl to immediately cut off his poisoned leg using an axe. After La Bête has tried to stun himself by gulping the last drop of rum, Eve acts as commanded and her patient instantly passes out from pain. Eve nurses the trapper and of necessity learns to hunt on her own and becomes capable of providing for the couple. Eventually, after La Bête learns to say 'please' to her and then thanks her for saving his life and declares he could not live without her, they become intimate.

The morning after, Eve seems to regret her decision and leaves the cabin, holding a rifle against La Bête who follows her to the river, angry and perplexed. Eve flees in his canoe, leaving La Bête floundering in the shallows. Her journey is fraught and she is thrown from the canoe in white-water rapids. The empty canoe is found by native Americans and Eve is rescued, and taken back to the settlement where she was taken from. Although welcome, she remains an outsider. The viewer is told that she remained in bed for two months and lost the child she was carrying. The family have arranged a marriage for her to a man who flirted with her early on in the film. Eve does not appear happy, however.

On the day of marriage, her foster-sister and foster mother dress her whilst the foster-sister demands to know how she lived in the wild, and if she killed La Bête. Eve runs away again finally to return to the man she has come to love, Jean La Bête. She arrives on the river beach and La Bête touches her face gently – but then welcomes her home by telling her to clean the house. Eve smiles. In the last scene, she stands in the doorway and watches La Bête hobbling into the forest singing a song. Eve chops wood and carries it into the cabin.

"When I'm a man, I'll take me a wife; We'll live in a house on the hill, the hill; With carriage and horses all white, all white; And she shall have diamonds and pearls, and pearls; And she shall have diamonds and pearls."

Cast

 * Rita Tushingham as Eve
 * Oliver Reed as La Bete
 * Rex Sevenoaks as The Trader
 * Barbara Chilcott as trader's wife
 * Linda Goranson as trader's daughter
 * Blaine Fairman as clerk
 * Walter Marsh as preacher
 * Joseph Golland as Baptiste (as Jo Golland)
 * Jon Granik as No Name
 * Merv Campone as Yellow Dog
 * Reg McReynolds as Captain (as Reginald McReynolds)

Production
Filming took place in autumn 1965 in Panorama Studios in West Vancouver. It resumed in 1966 in Scotland.

The soundtrack was composed by Ron Goodwin and the main theme ("Main Titles to The Trap") is used as the theme tune for the BBC's live coverage of the London Marathon, performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Release
The film opened at the Odeon in Kensington, London on 15 September 1966 paired with The Pad (and How to Use It) (1966). It had its official world premiere later in the evening at the Leicester Square Theatre.

Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Primitive saga of the pioneering backwoods, a simple story simply told. And this is where the film falls: simple folk the Canadian settlers may have been, but the script makes them crude to boot. Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham (not required to speak) struggle to make their characters more than cardboard cut-outs, and some of their scenes together in the log cabin have a certain charm, but for the most part the script requires them to do little more than register an appropriate expression. Still, there is compensation in Robert Krasker's fine location photography (marred only by studio snow and some very obvious process shots) and in an excellently staged action sequence when the trapper is hunted by a pack of snarling wolves."

Leslie Halliwell said: "Primitive open air melodrama with good action sequences; well made but hardly endearing."

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "Made at the height of the Swinging Sixties, this surprisingly moving drama was a distinct change of pace for stars Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham. Set in Canada in the 1880s, it traces the relationship of fur trapper Reed and the waif-like Tushingham, a mute he purchases at a wife auction. Acting almost solely with her enormous eyes, Tushingham gives a genuinely affecting performance and, as impatience turns to understanding and ultimately affection, Reed also demonstrates a mellow side that he too rarely allows us to see. Director Sidney Hayers makes their adventures believable."