Pour l'amour de Mary

Sometimes all you need to do is to have a good laugh and who is better to ask for it than Mr Harold Lloyd himself? His short and feature length comedies were all suspenseful, fast-paced and full of sharp, witty humor and highly dangerous stunts that keep the viewer on the edge of the seat even a century later.

One of those high octane movies was a short feature called "Now or never" that came out on this day exactly a hundred years ago. This 35-minute picture, accompanied by fantastic new musical score by maestro Robert Israel, tells a story of a boy racing against time to get to his childhood sweetheart; when he finally does - she has a child of her employer's with her and the boy reluctantly agrees to babysit her which leads to more comedic situations.

This picture, although being per se the quietest in Harold Lloyd's filmography, has nevertheless a lot of memorable scenes and chase sequences, with tons of deus ex machina moments along the way. I believe by choosing to go in this direction Harold wanted to show the deeper side of his already established frequent character, not just a dopey loving little boy but also caring, generous and literally giving all he's got to a complete stranger. That side of people's nature is obscenely rare to find nowadays because between "now" and "never" people usually choose the latter but it's something that still is out there in the world and racing through time just like we are.