REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


SAFETY LAST! Hal Roach Studios, 1923. Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young, Westcott Clarke. Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor.

   Harold Lloyd silents are, as a class, wonderfully inventive, well-thought-out and screamingly funny, and here’s an example. Everyone has seen the picture of Lloyd hanging off the clock while climbing the side of a building in Safety Last!, but the sequence itself is one of sheerest genius:

   For starters, the film is about 90 minutes long, and the whole last third of it is devoted to that climb up the building, which is as carefully crafted as a suspense set-piece. Lloyd has arranged to win himself a promotion and the hand of his childhood sweetheart by having a friend climb the building as a Publicity Stunt.

   Unfortunately, the friend is wanted by the Police and spotted just before he starts his climb. So he and Harold arrange that Harold will climb the first floor, then duck in a window where his friend will don his coat and continue the climb.

   But the Cops spot him again and begin chasing him frantically so that he never just quite has the time to make the switch, and Harold has to keep going “just one more floor.”

   There is a marvelous few minutes where the buddy tosses a rope out for Harold but is chased from the room before he gets to tie it to anything! This is followed by a nerve-wracking stretch where Harold strains, contorts, scratches and all-else to get hold of the rope that will be his death-trap, and a heart-stopping span where he gets it waving just enough to almost reach, then launches himself out, grabs it and plummets down to … well, see the movie: