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Safety Last
1923
as
There was a wooden platform several feet below Harold— which he might have hit if he had fallen! Otherwise there was no faking of this scene. Note the complete lack of crowds and the disinterest of the passers-by below; human flies were no novelty in those hectic days, and that far away, the shoppers and strollers had no way of knowing that this one was Harold Lloyd!
Safety Last was one of Harold Lloyd's earlier comedy features, and was quite certainly his best, even though his later The Freshman, cashing in on the collegiate craze of the times, was commercially the most successful of all his films. But every one of the Lloyd comedies made a handsome profit and Safety Last certainly shows why. It is fast, clean, and optimistic; gags follow one upon the other at a breathless rate, and yet each gag is given the proper time to "build." There are no dull stretches, either in plot or in comedy, and an abundant variety of humor, ranging from the pathos (often over-stressed in Lloyd's films) of his attempts to impress his girl by pretending to be a high-powered executive when he is still a humble clerk, to the fast knockabout of a department store sale, the subtleties of avoiding paying the landlady her overdue rent, the speed and pep of a mad race through the streets to arrive at work on time, all climaxed by Harold's incredible building-climbing climax.
"Climax" is perhaps an understatement, since the sequence ran for over a third of the picture! These scenes, performed without a double, and without the aid of technical trickery, still thrill while they amuse, for they are so obviously real. True, cunning camera
work conceals the fact that Harold is working with a net not too far below. And some of the shots were taken on a building that appeared to be much higher than it was. (Actually located on a hill, it appeared, even from one or two stories up, to be towering into the heavens, thanks to the perspective effects created by other buildings in the lower level. ) But even knowing how these amazing scenes were shot doesn't make them any less impressive, especially since Lloyd had previously lost several fingers on one hand. (He uses a rubber glove on that hand, and aside from people who notice that he does most of his precarious clinging with the other hand, it invariably passes undetected. ) There was nothing terribly subtle about Lloyd's comedies. They didn't have the pathos or invention of Chaplin, Keaton or Langdon. They were basically "formula" comedies. But what a wonderfully polished and expertly manipulated formula it was— with enough variance from picture to picture to keep audiences happily coming back for more. Mildred Davis, Lloyd's wife, made a charming and winsome heroine in Safety Last (as in other Lloyd pictures). Sam Taylor and Tim Whelan directed— and Lloyd probably directed them.
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