Ma fille est somnambule

I watched and taped all of TCM's tribute to Harold Lloyd last year, and have recently been working my way through the last few items I taped but hadn't watched. Wanting to turn my girlfriend on to Lloyd, I asked her to watch this short, made after he had established his "glasses character" but before he made the move to longer, feature-length films. HIGH AND DIZZY is the perfect introduction to Harold Lloyd's brand of comedy. As a doctor with few patients (he has cobwebs on his office phone), Lloyd shows great personal charm and the gags are brilliantly devised to move fast yet work a routine in every possible way before moving on from it. For instance, one scene where Lloyd helps his friend (they are both inebriated) put on a coat, and there is a telephone pole between the man's back and his coat, occurs naturally in the plot sequence, is milked every possible way for about thirty or forty seconds, and then leads to another ridiculous situation. The whole film is that well-constructed. Lloyd's great physical skills are in evidence throughout. Of course, there has to be a "danger" element in a Lloyd film, so here he (and his sleepwalking female patient) are put on a ledge. A drunken man AND a sleepwalker on a ledge about twenty stories high! Now THAT is a brilliant set-up for comedy. The clarity of the copy of the film provided to TCM by the Lloyd estate is sparkling, and Robert Israel's musical score, which subtly works sound effects (pratfalls, ringing telephones) into the musical compositions, helps to move the film along and also helps people not used to watching silent films to appreciate what is happening. It's sometimes hard to get an average person to watch a feature-length silent film, so HIGH AND DIZZY might be the perfect short to show someone as an example of Harold Lloyd's dazzling comedy genius. I heard a rumor that SAFETY LAST may be shown theatrically in 2005--let's hope that's true. Imagine how wonderful it will be to see Harold Lloyd's most famous "thrill comedy" on the big screen!

Mildred Davis sleepwalks. Her father, Wallace Howe, brings her in to Doctor Harold Lloyd for a consultation.

It's an ambitious comedy for Harold, timing in at almost half an hour.... which is, alas, a fawning way of saying that it's not as good as it might have been trimmed a bit shorter. But there's no doubt that Harold was getting popular. Yet so long as he stayed in short subjects, the money would remain likewise short, renting for so much a reel. The twenty-six minutes this one takes might not seem much to the modern audience for a blockbuster, but it allowed everyone at Hal Roach's studio to stretch a bit and see what they could do at longer lengths.

Unfortunately, it sags in the middle. Harold gets drunk with friendly bootlegger Roy Brooks, and the gags when they are together are pretty good. However, eventually Harold is off on his own, and the jokes are not as good.... and then out of nowhere, it's time to wrap up the movie.

Harold and his writers hadn't learned how to pace a longer comedy. They soon would learn; they could write a straight drama and when it didn't work out in previews, turn it into a comedy by dropping in gags, but stories don't stop and start like that.

In this silent short Harold Lloyd plays a young doctor who has lack of patients.Then a father (Wallace Howe) brings her daughter (Mildred Davis) to the doctor.She has a problem with sleepwalking.The doctor pays too much attention to the daughter so the father takes them away.Harold's doctor friend (Roy Brooks) asks him to join in a drinking binge so they both get very, very drunk.Soon Harold finds himself at the same hotel as the girl is.And yes, she starts sleepwalking.High and Dizzy (1920) is directed by Hal Roach.The young Harold Lloyd gets to show his comical talent.He and Mildred Davis work great together.No wonder they got married three years later.They click in a way only a future married couple would.This movie is 26 minutes of pure fun.I found myself laughing to Mr. Lloyd's comedy more than once.

Fast-paced fun which, as often with Harold Lloyd, features distinct - and proved - backdrops for his gags: first, the doctor's office (where the star, as a novice M.D., is forced to impersonate his own clients as a ruse to attract genuine ones!); then, the city streets after a drinking binge with his pal (capped by a pre-SAFETY LAST! [1923] scene in which they fall foul of a policeman); next, the hotel lobby where the reception desk and an elevator become the 'targets' of Lloyd's drunken havoc; and, finally, the trademark 'thrill' sequence in which both the tipsy Lloyd and sleep-walking heroine Mildred Davis are seen walking perilously on the ledge of a tall building!

Harold does his balancing act off the side of a building trick in this short, joined this time by wife-to-be Mildred Davis (or her stunt double). I didn't realise he performed this stunt in so many movies – this is the fourth I've seen – but it still leaves you with your heart in your mouth when you see him waving his arms wildly as he's perched on the very edge above a multi-storey fall. No doubt it was largely done with clever camera angles, but it still looks good, especially when Harold's drunken character doesn't realise the danger he's in.

He plays a doctor in this one, and given his propensity for binge drinking and chain-smoking he could have stepped straight out of the pages of a red-top tabloid. He's not the most ethical of doctors either, declaring his undying love for his patient (the aforementioned Davis) within moments of meeting her. For some reason he feels it's important to pretend he has lots of patients and adopts a number of disguises to do so, even though his real patient is already sitting in the waiting room.

After a while the action shifts to his friend's office down the hall. He's a home-brewing enthusiast, and when the corks start popping off the bottles he's got stashed in a filing cabinet, he and Harold decide its best to drink them all rather than let them go to waste. Lloyd makes a pretty funny drunk: not as funny as Chaplin maybe, but then he's not as spiteful either, even though he does do some distinctly un-Lloyd-like things while under the influence. In fact at times he's quite removed from the boyish, straw-hat sporting Lloyd we usually see. There's no real plot to speak of, but, given the strength of the material, Lloyd probably didn't feel he needed one…