1923 romantic comedyRating: 17/20
Plot: Harold Lloyd, played by an actor named Harold Lloyd, moves to the big city to try to climb to the top of the proverbial ladder and make it big or whatever they do in America. He leaves his sweetheart behind with the promise that he will some day have enough money to marry her so that the neighbors will no longer accuse them of "shacking up like sex-crazed spawn of Beelzebub himself!" That's how people talked back then. He struggles with a job where he spends his day cutting cloth. His girlfriend arrives, Lloyd successfully lies to her (the foundation of any good relationship) about having a much better job, and through a completely unlikely series of events, he is forced to climb a thirteen-story building for 10,000 dollars. That'll buy not only a wedding, but an awful lot of stupid looking hats, Harold Lloyd!
Note: I wonder if I should give a bonus point for punctuation in movie titles.
The story is a little hokey, but this had a lot of fun silent movie visual gags. There was also some dated stuff that just didn't work. A policeman having "kick me" written on his back and then kicked in the butt? C'mon! It's a tidy little story that ends exactly like you think it will (with Harold Lloyd plummeting to his death and his lover, so devastated, taking her own life moments later), and the acting is pretty solid for early 20's stuff, but the real greatness is in the last half hour in which Lloyd scales those thirteen stories. I can't even imagine how exciting this would have been in 1923 or how it raised the bar on movies with stunts, and the tension and thrills still work eighty-four years later. I don't want to know how it was done. I imagine tricks were used, but I couldn't detect anything askew and I know he actually climbed a building. The photography is great, and I think I actually laughed two and a half times although one of those times was because the front of my pants looked funny.
Somebody should remake Safety Last! with the main character trying to climb to the top of my hair:
This is the only Lloyd film that I have seen so far, but I also thought it was great. The stunts are nearly on a Keaton level and I enjoyed the story. Also a 17 for me.
ReplyDeleteLet me know when you see another Lloyd movie that is even close to this one...other couple few I've seen have been fairly pedestrian.
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