Director: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
While the 1001 Movies list is a great tool for those wanting to expand their viewing experience, it is very much weighted towards more modern films. Of the silents, comedies are largely drawn from the filmographies of Keaton and Chaplin, who are indisputably great, but many other popular stars are ignored; the main one is Harold Lloyd. Safety Last! deserves to be mentioned along with The General and City Lights, being as funny as those films, and featuring equally iconic images.
Like Keaton and Chaplin's characters, Lloyd's 'Boy' works for a living, and his aim is to marry his sweetheart. He has stretched the truth about his employment; his girl thinks he is the general manager when is only a humble sales assistant, and many shenanigans ensue. An irate policeman is also after our hero (a sub-plot common to silent comedies). All this leads to a great third act, involving stunt work that would make Keaton proud: Lloyd climbing the department store building to earn a tidy sum. As someone who is terrified by heights, the laughs come with a dose of fear as we watch Lloyd teeter on the edge of window ledges and hang from clock faces.
Silent comedies have generally aged better than more melodramatic fare from the era, and Lloyd is certainly one of the greats. While I have watched many Chaplin and Keaton, and love both for their different approaches to storytelling, I am looking forward to seeing more of Lloyd. Any suggestions?
This is my favorite Lloyd movie and one that ought to be on the list. I have a box set with nine (!) disks, but the quality vary a lot. I prefer his early material. In his later years his jokes got tired and old and his talkies are generally poor.
ReplyDeleteSadly talkies did spell the death of many silent stars. Even though Chaplin did manage to weather that storm, none of his talkies are as brilliant as Modern Times, City Lights, or the Gold Rush.
DeleteThanks for info, I shall look at his early stuff first.
Almost everything I've seen from Lloyd is worth seeing. I even saw one of his sound films - Cat's-Paw - and found it very entertaining.
ReplyDeleteBut to single out a couple of his silent films - Girl Shy and Hot Water.
Girl Shy is start-to-finish hilarious.
I've never seen all of Hot Water (i'm not sure a complete version exists) but there's a clip where he has to take a bunch of packages (and a live turkey!) on a streetcar to get home. I saw it with a group of friends and we were all laughing like crazy people.
Thanks for the recommendations! They do sound good; even just the idea of taking a live animal on public transport is funny.
DeleteThe segment with the turkey is on YouTube, titled something like "Harold Lloyd versus the turkey."
DeleteYou'll get to The Kid Brother eventually, and it's good. Speedy is interesting, but it lacks a lot of the crazy stunts that made Lloyd who he was.
ReplyDeleteFor my money, you've seen the best of him in Safety Last!, a film that is still criminally missing from the 1001 Movies list. It's not just his best; it's one of the best silent films ever made.
Yeah, the list is strange in some of its inclusions and exclusions. Considering the iconic nature of the final act, I can't understand why it wasn't included; there are definitely some films that could be dropped for this one. As much as I love Keaton, surely one of his could have been swapped for one of Lloyd (though not The General or Sherlock, Jr.).
DeleteSeven Chances is the one I'd pitch, although it has its moments.
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