Safety Last. (U.)
Directed by Fred Newmeyer/Sam Taylor. 1923.
Starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davies, Bill Strothers, Noah Young and Westcott B. Clarke. Out on Blu-ray as part of The Criterion Collection from September 14th. Black and white. 73 mins.
“Hooray for Harold Lloyd/ Dear Old Lloyd/ Black and White/ Dig That Style/ A Pair of Glasses and a Smile.” The guiding belief of the (very impressive) extras on this Criterion release is that Harold Lloyd is the forgotten third genius of silent film comedy: unfairly overlooked while Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are revered as master filmmakers.
Well, I'm not so sure. Back in the 70s, Lloyd's work was on telly frequently, packaged up into a series of twenty-minute clips shows. These were burdened by a really irritating narrator but the catchy theme tune – duh da duh da duh da duh da duh duh la – has stuck with me to this day and he popped up almost as regularly as Laurel and Hardy in the school holiday TV schedules. OK, so maybe interest has tailed off over the following four decades but the image of him dangling from the hands of a clock at the top of a skyscraper, taken from this his most famous film, is arguably the most iconic of all silent cinema.
If he's fallen a little out of favour it's probably because he's not really as good as Keaton or Chaplin. Hal Roach said that he wasn't a comedian, he was an actor playing a comedian and there's something in that. The other two were born into it; he fell into it but worked hard enough to be ranked up with them. And being unburdened by genius, he was that bit more focused on entertaining audiences. The jokes come thick and fast but are very rarely careless or lazy. The concluding human fly sequence in Safety Last, where Lloyd scales a Los Angeles skyscraper, is as fantastic a comic set-piece as any in the silent cinema era, or after.
What precedes it is also pretty sharp. He moves to the big city to make good and thus be able to provide a good life for the fiancé (Davies) he left behind. He writes home that he's doing well, when in fact he is working on the shop floor of a department store and spending too much of his money on gifts to send back to her. I think the plot makes you kind of hate her for being a materialistic shrew, and him a little for getting himself into this bind.
A combination of American go-getting, tireless perfectionism and an unquenchable sense of curiosity meant Lloyd would probably have succeeded at whatever career he put his mind to. As a silent comedian his comic reactions, his facial expressions and the connection they forge with the audience aren't as graceful or subtle as those of Chaplin or Keaton, but they may be more immediate, more direct. In his day he was more successful than them, probably because audiences identified more with him. He'll get himself into scrapes but he's never a loser and he doesn't do pathos. He knows he is resourceful enough to come up with a way out of any situation he finds himself in. His on-screen persona is more aspirational, more identifiable with The Jazz Age, but he can convey a wide range of emotions, from vulnerable to almost bullying.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lloyd's comedy character is that it's just him putting on a pair of round, rimless glasses. They completely transformed him and gave him a comic persona that was much less rigidly defined than the Little Tramp of Keaton's stone face. He was Clark Kent and Superman, simultaneously.
Supplements
New, restored 2K digital film transfer
Directed by Fred Newmeyer/Sam Taylor. 1923.
Starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davies, Bill Strothers, Noah Young and Westcott B. Clarke. Out on Blu-ray as part of The Criterion Collection from September 14th. Black and white. 73 mins.
“Hooray for Harold Lloyd/ Dear Old Lloyd/ Black and White/ Dig That Style/ A Pair of Glasses and a Smile.” The guiding belief of the (very impressive) extras on this Criterion release is that Harold Lloyd is the forgotten third genius of silent film comedy: unfairly overlooked while Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are revered as master filmmakers.
Well, I'm not so sure. Back in the 70s, Lloyd's work was on telly frequently, packaged up into a series of twenty-minute clips shows. These were burdened by a really irritating narrator but the catchy theme tune – duh da duh da duh da duh da duh duh la – has stuck with me to this day and he popped up almost as regularly as Laurel and Hardy in the school holiday TV schedules. OK, so maybe interest has tailed off over the following four decades but the image of him dangling from the hands of a clock at the top of a skyscraper, taken from this his most famous film, is arguably the most iconic of all silent cinema.
If he's fallen a little out of favour it's probably because he's not really as good as Keaton or Chaplin. Hal Roach said that he wasn't a comedian, he was an actor playing a comedian and there's something in that. The other two were born into it; he fell into it but worked hard enough to be ranked up with them. And being unburdened by genius, he was that bit more focused on entertaining audiences. The jokes come thick and fast but are very rarely careless or lazy. The concluding human fly sequence in Safety Last, where Lloyd scales a Los Angeles skyscraper, is as fantastic a comic set-piece as any in the silent cinema era, or after.
What precedes it is also pretty sharp. He moves to the big city to make good and thus be able to provide a good life for the fiancé (Davies) he left behind. He writes home that he's doing well, when in fact he is working on the shop floor of a department store and spending too much of his money on gifts to send back to her. I think the plot makes you kind of hate her for being a materialistic shrew, and him a little for getting himself into this bind.
A combination of American go-getting, tireless perfectionism and an unquenchable sense of curiosity meant Lloyd would probably have succeeded at whatever career he put his mind to. As a silent comedian his comic reactions, his facial expressions and the connection they forge with the audience aren't as graceful or subtle as those of Chaplin or Keaton, but they may be more immediate, more direct. In his day he was more successful than them, probably because audiences identified more with him. He'll get himself into scrapes but he's never a loser and he doesn't do pathos. He knows he is resourceful enough to come up with a way out of any situation he finds himself in. His on-screen persona is more aspirational, more identifiable with The Jazz Age, but he can convey a wide range of emotions, from vulnerable to almost bullying.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lloyd's comedy character is that it's just him putting on a pair of round, rimless glasses. They completely transformed him and gave him a comic persona that was much less rigidly defined than the Little Tramp of Keaton's stone face. He was Clark Kent and Superman, simultaneously.
Supplements
New, restored 2K digital film transfer
- Musical score by composer Carl Davis from 1989, synchronized and restored under his supervision and presented in uncompressed stereo on the Blu-ray edition
- Alternate score by organist Gaylord Carter from the late 1960s, presented in uncompressed monaural on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary featuring film critic Leonard Maltin and director and Harold Lloyd archivist Richard Correll
- Introduction by Suzanne Lloyd, Lloyd’s granddaughter and the president of Harold Lloyd Entertainment
- Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius, a 108-minute documentary from 1989
- Three newly restored Lloyd shorts: Take a Chance (1918), Young Mr. Jazz (1919), and His Royal Slyness (1920), with commentary by Correll and film writer John Bengtson
- Locations and Effects, a new documentary featuring Bengtson and visual-effects expert Craig Barron
- New interview with Davis
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Ed Park
