Never Weaken

In a city full of skyscrapers a boy and a girl fall in love between window ledges. However their romance seems to be under threat when a lack of patients for her boss's doctor's surgery sees her told she'll be laid off. In order to keep his office hours relationship alive, the boy sets out to drum up some business and thus keep her job.

I've not seen enough Harold Lloyd to say whether or not I'm a massive fan but I have certainly never had any great desire to hunt his films down in the same way as I have with Laurel and Hardy (whom I generally adore). However with BBC4's consistently impressive Silent Clown's series of documentaries, I got a rare opportunity to see one of his shorts as selected by Paul Merton. The overly jaunty new score played over the film was a bit of a pain because although it fitted the action on screen, I didn't think it worked for the period the film came from. Regardless I got into the mild humour of Lloyd drumming up injuries on the streets as the film got going until it reached the high (sorry) point of the skyscraper conclusion. This section is pretty much the whole show as it demonstrates his daredevil sense of humour.

Sure he isn't actually 50 stories above the ground but the stunts are still very impressive let me assure you. His timing is good and although I didn't find this hilarious, he is impressive in how he plays the audience for laughs and gasps at the same time. The support cast all play to form but this is all about Lloyd and, considering I'm not a real fan, I did think he was well worth seeing.

Overall an impressive and amusing silent short film. Not as out and out funny as I would have hoped but the skyscraper scrapes are well worth seeing and make the second part of the film much stronger than the rather genial first half.

A HAROLD LLOYD Short Subject.

A lovesick young man must NEVER WEAKEN when he unexpectedly finds himself in a most precarious & dangerous situation.

Here is one of Harold Lloyd's thrill pictures, which offers quick-moving comedy and genuine suspense. The first half of the film has Harold trying to roundup patients for his girlfriend's boss. The second half puts Harold up on the framework of a building under construction - clutching, crawling & careening out over empty space. His obvious athletic ability is made even more remarkable by the fact that he was using only half of his right hand, his disfigurement, caused by a studio accident, hidden by a glove.

Pretty Mildred Davis, who would soon become Mrs. Harold Lloyd, plays the object of his affections.

Harold Lloyd's Never Weaken finds itself notable for several reasons, more than just being Lloyd's final silent short before moving on to strictly feature-length productions. For one, the short was a pioneer of the silent genre known as "thrill-comedy," which blended the elements of slapstick and humor with aspects of a thriller, giving audiences moments to laugh and moments to gasp which, if done right, could give off complex feelings. Furthermore, a good chunk of this short features Lloyd atop a large construction sight, balancing on long, metal pillars, struggling to stay on, and hanging on for dear life in, which only proves more tantalizing when one realizes that Lloyd did all his own stunts for this short, refusing to wear a wire or a harness to further ensure safety and support.

The film stars Lloyd as an office-worker, who plans to wed the beautiful Mildred (Mildred Davis), whom has been his girlfriend for a long time now. However, after hearing a man say to her "of course I will marry you," without any context, the man becomes distraught, emotionally upset, and decides to commit suicide by blindfolding himself and rigging a gun to fire when he pulls a string that is tied to the trigger. After an odd and nearly unexplainable series of events, with the bullet hitting the light next to him, the man finds himself high above the city, atop a construction site, all of a sudden struggling to hold on for dear life.

Never Weaken illustrates the age-old idea of a misunderstanding, which has been put to great effect in comedy films and, as we see, even the early days of silent filmmaking. Being brewed from the classic misrepresentation makes for cute innovation, for the time, as we find ourselves one step ahead of the character with each turn, right from the core misunderstanding in the very beginning. Throw in Lloyd's incredible facial acting and unbelievably talented physical comedy, and this is a conglomeration of true talent and innovation you can't help but cheer on through and through.

Starring: Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis. Directed by: Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor.

This is one of Harold Lloyd's best shorts and the second of his thrill comedies (in chronological order) to be included in this collection. The film can be neatly divided into three sections: the first sees Harold ingeniously gathering patients for the despondent clinic where his beloved, Mildred Davis, works (and which probably influenced Lloyd's later feature FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE [1926]); the second, as was the case with many a Lloyd comedy, he goes through several failed attempts at suicide (when he mistakes Mildred's clergyman brother for her lover!); the last third - and the undeniable highlight - has the star up to his neck in trouble when he ends up high in the air on a construction site (featuring some of Lloyd's most incredible stuntwork, the whole idea was borrowed by Laurel & Hardy for the second half of one of their most popular Silent shorts, LIBERTY [1929]).

I was flipping through the channels last night and noticed a Harold Lloyd marathon on AMC. His granddaughter Suzanne has rereleased many of his films and was on the channel talking about the careers of her grandfather and grandmother (Mildred Davis, "the girl" in this film). The characters are sweet and loving and Harold Lloyd comes off as the lovelorn and innocent boy whose greatest wish is to marry his sweetheart. When he thinks she is in love with another, he plans to kill himself rather than live without her. Attempted suicide has never been so funny. Especially hilarious is the painstaking care he takes in writing the suicide note. My children (ages 5, 10, and 13) were so amused by Lloyd's antics that I was amazed. They never thought that silent films could be so expressive and funny. I love the fact that this art form is appreciated and shown on television for all to see and fall in love with all over again.