Safety Last!

Safety Last was funny pretty much throughout its entirety. The scene where Harold and his roommate hide in their coats (you'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about) got an enormous laugh which lasted for a long time, followed by some applause. I remember that there was a slow section, lasting about 5 minutes, after Harold's fiancee arrived in the city, but other than that, this film was consistently hilarious.

And then during the building climbing scene, there were so many laughs and gasps, applause, and shouts ("OH MY GOD!") coming from the audience. It was probably the single most hair-raising scene that I or most of the other people in the theater had ever seen. And the climb, which lasts, I believe, 12 stories, should have gotten old. But it never came close to getting old. Each joke was masterful.

After having seen the film, I was unfairly comparing it to the silent film that I had seen the previous week at a theater with live piano: Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. Well, nothing is really comparable to that film. I consider it the funniest film I've ever seen. I was planning to give Safety Last a 9/10, but after some thought, I realized that I laughed a lot harder and more at this film than 90% of the other comedies I've seen. At least 90%, but probably much more. I have to give this a 10/10. This film really should be on DVD, or at least VHS. Harold Lloyd shouldn't be as forgotten as he is.

One of the best contructed full-length comedies of the twenties. Harold Lloyd was not as outrageously inventive as Chaplin, nor as sentimental. His style was a kind of minimalist one, taking a simple idea -- say, being a hasseled salesman in a clothing store and needing desperately to become a success -- and building on that small situation until, by the hilarious climax, he finds himself swinging from the bent minute hand of an oversized clock on the side of a building many stories above the street. (Human flies were popular around this time, as were flagpole sitters and goldfish eaters.) When a mouse crawls up the leg of his trousers, not only does Loyd go through a sort of break dance trying to get rid of it but when he finally does shake it out, the mouse falls down the wall of the building and in the process removes a toupee from a spectator peering out of a lower window. All of this without matte work. Not to say that the earlier scenes in the store aren't extremely amusing, because they are. Loyd had a very mobile face and like most silent comedians a deft physical manner. He makes a splendidly fawning salesman. A very funny movie indeed, and thrilling as well. Any five minutes of the climax, taken at random, makes one dizzier than whole sections of Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone hanging around the Eiger or elsewhere in the Alps. Somehow, Loyd managed to make a self-deprecatory joke out of his athletic skill, while nowadays stars use what amount of it they have as an opportunity to show off their bravery and, when possible, their bulging muscles. Let's hear it for the silents.

I found much of the building climbing scene of this movie unwatchable. Not because it's poorly done, but because it's too well done. A certain amount of doubt in my mind about exactly how many of the shots are faked, and how many are definitely Harold Lloyd (distant shots are apparently a double, but many hanging-from ledges shots are close up shots of Lloyd) meant that the palms of my hands were sweating while I watched it, and I felt sizable relief when he finally makes it to the top. The pre-amble to the climb is not really that wonderful, but the climb makes it all worthwhile. Interesting to compare this movie to a modern effects movie like Starship Troopers. Give me Safety Last any day.

In the era of silent comedies, the man who was 2nd only to Charlie Chaplin was not Buster Keaton, but Harold Lloyd. Though he has since been mostly forgotten, except by film historians (who reluctantly list him automatically as the third great silent comedian behind Keaton and Chaplin), Lloyd's is still remembered for his clock sequence in Safety Last. More recently, this has been reproduced in "Back to the Future" and "Shanghai Knights".

However, it is not just the skyscraper sequence that makes this film special. Harold portrays his usual go-getter self, as his character moves to the city and tries to become a successful businessman, in order to impress his girlfriend. Along the way, there are many amusing mishaps, which conclude with the aforementioned skyscraper sequence. Quite magical in its silence, as compared to the later remake, also by Lloyd, "Feet First".

Highly recommended for silent film fans, and anyone wanting to get a taste of the genre.

Wiry, athletic, bespectacled Harold Lloyd may rank third after Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in "silent age" comedy polls, but when it comes to perilous, pulse-racing, gravity-defying stuntwork, he's the "King of the World!"

The aptly-titled "Safety Last" is without a doubt Lloyd's signature film. The indelible still taken of Harold dangling from the minute-hand of that Big Ben-looking clock is definitive silent screen imagery. A shame too for it is only one classic moment from a tireless legacy of work that is too often overlooked.

Isn't it amazing that despite knowing the outcome of this movie, knowing that Lloyd survived all these crazy stunts, your heart still skips a beat every time he scales that 12-story building, floor by floor, encountering every obstacle imaginable...or unimaginable? Those pesky pigeons, the mouse, the flagpole, the painters, the rope, the mad dog and, of course, the clock. What adds to the intrigue is knowing he did his own stunts, that he had lost fingers prior to this filming in another movie mishap, that there were no safety nets underneath, and that there was no trick photography used. I say Harold deserves a more prominent place in movie history, suffering for his art as no other artist has.

The plot leading up to his daredevil antics is fairly pat but sprayed throughout with inventive sight gags. Harold plays your simple, hapless, small-town 'everyman' who goes to the BIG city to seek fame and fortune, leaving his true love (played by Mildred Davis, his real-life wife) at home until he's makes it. Fresh off the bus, he eventually manages to scrape up a job as a clerk in a department store, a job that takes him nowhere fast. To save face, he keeps sending expensive trinkets back home that indicate otherwise. Convinced that he has indeed made it, she heads off to the BIG city to join him, much to his chagrin. Desperate to earn quick cash before she discovers the truth, he takes his boss up on an offer and works up a publicity ruse to drum up sales for the store.

The rest is classic Lloyd. Wearing his trademark straw hat and horn-rimmed glasses, the meek mouse suddenly turns into Mighty Mouse as our boy, through a series of mishaps, literally moves up in the world, scaling heights even he never dreamed of!

All's well, of course, that ends well, as we've been saying for centuries. Sure, we know how things ended back in the good ol' days, but isn't it great to know that when Harold got the girl, he STAYED with the girl? In real life, Harold and Mildred remained sweethearts for over 45 years.

Highly recommended for those who want to see more of this genius's amazing work is "Kid Brother" and "The Freshman." For me, this guy still provides one heck of an "E" ticket rollercoaster ride.