This was my first Harold Lloyd movie, and I absolutely loved it. This dude is one bad motherfucker, plus he is a total babe. Do you see his Daria James Joyce glasses? Babe!Safety Last is Harold's most famous movie because it features this clock sequence. He actually climbs a twelve-story building and dangles from the hands of this clock. You can tell Lloyd actually does this because the cars are moving below him. This is so awesome and unbelievable! It's even scarier than Buster Keaton having a house fall on him or get tossed around as a football as a baby in Vaudeville.
I like that Harold Lloyd's character in the movie has the same name -- very Jerry Seinfeld-esque. He's a comedian too! One thing that sets Harold's movies apart from contemporaries Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin is that Harold the character is very lucky. Things seem to work out for him -- like when he makes his friend smack a cop, he doesn't get in trouble. When he pretends to be his boss at the store to impress his girlfriend, he doesn't get caught. He's also very smooth. For example, he writes the reflection of "Kick me" with chalk on a wall and then gently nudges a cop against this wall. Thus, the imprint is written correctly on his back, and the cop gets kicked! Awesome. I'm trying this goof as soon as I can.
5/5 pizzas
You know who else likes goofs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtcbVUNO1NY&feature=related
ReplyDeleteWhat also makes Harold Lloyd way interesting as compared to Chaplin and Keaton is that his estate held on to his movies for a long time, even as Chaplin and Keaton lapsed into the public domain. This may have been a savvy business move, but it meant that his movies were shown far less often, and today he's not nearly as famous as either of them, even though he's got the same auteur drive as either of them and Keaton's talent for stunts (though he wasn't nearly as reckless). He also is interesting as someone who stands in for the Horatio Alger American Dream -- he is always trying to do better in the world, something that Chaplin and Keaton never really did, making him a somewhat strange hero for his time.
ReplyDelete