Oh! La belle voiture

(1920) Get Out and Get Under COMEDY

Harold Lloyd playing a boy part of a theater play, the first few minutes is a dream sequence where he is told his dream girl is already been married, and stumbles on to it. Only then as soon as he wakes up, he realizes he is late as the led actor as the prince. And of course, it does not run smoothly upon his drive toward there. One of the many slapstick's also include his run ins with trafficking cops while driving. And his problems with a young curious child such as making him think that he got the car to work by standing on the side and moving it up and down and upon him fixing it. This is the seventh of fifteen movies Harold Lloyd starred with actress Mildred Pierce.

I have a production still in which Harold Lloyd and producer/director Hal Roach are obviously having an enjoyable time embellishing a shooting script with gag after gag. Employing a cast as long as the memo Hal is holding, "An Eastern Westerner" incorporated more production values than the average feature.

What's more, Hal Roach's smoothly expansive direction certainly gives the lie to the often-repeated claim that as a director, he was second-rate.

If another proof of the absurdity of this claim was needed, you have only to look at another of Lloyd's 1920 two-reelers, namely this "Get Out and Get Under". This short is a superbly orchestrated and timed little comedy in which no expense seems to have been spared.

The camera really moves when appropriate and all the action is brilliantly staged.

Indeed, one of Lloyd's favorite props, a streetcar, figures in the action and the cast includes wonderful Sunshine Sammy Morrison who shares some hilarious "business" with Lloyd.

This is a good Harold Lloyd comedy that gets plenty of mileage out of the material, and it has quite a few amusing moments. It is one of many silent comedies that take one situation and then stretch it out as far as possible.

The top silent comedians such as Lloyd could often find quite a variety of possibilities in a simple premise.

In this case, most of the story has Harold in a desperate rush to get where he is going. The number of obstacles he encounters is pretty creative, from the expected, such as an uncooperative automobile, to unexpected obstacles such as a friendly little boy and a cute dog. There is some decent slapstick, and there are also some good sight gags, a couple of which might be the movie's best moments. It works pretty well overall.

Get Out and Get Under (1920)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A young actor (Harold Lloyd) must rush to get to his play but his car starts all sorts of trouble. There's a few nice laughs here, including some nice bits with a young kid and a dog but some of the gags don't work as well. There's some amazing stunts including one where Lloyd jumps out of the car while it continues down the road. Lloyd must then catch back up with it. Another scene has the car going through thousands of people, which looks quite amazing. This was one of Lloyd's first films after a bomb exploded in his hand, nearly killing him and in a few close ups you can still see the scars on his face.

Get Out and Get Under is Harold Lloyd's first film after an exploding accident that caused him to lose a two fingers and a thumb in one of his hands requiring him to wear a prosthetic glove in movies for the rest of his career. This is a very funny short in which Harold is hurrying to get to the theatre for his performance. Lots of hilarious scenes concerning ways to fix his car, his dealings with a kid (Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison of the original Our Gang) who keeps hanging around while he's working, a dog, some engineers of a train ferry the car accidentally goes on, a parade, a banana peel (no surprise there), a steep hill, a water tower, a fire hydrant, a "road closed" sign, and some motorcycle cops. His leading lady is played by his eventual wife, Mildred Davis. Produced and directed by comedy mastermind Hal Roach. The music I heard in this version was provided by Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks Orchestra. Highly essential viewing for silent movie comedy fans especially those of Harold Lloyd.