Safety Last (1923)

Director: Fred C. Newmeyer                          Writer: Hal Roach & Sam Taylor
Film Score: Carl Davis (1990)                        Cinematography: Walter Lundin
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother and Noah Young

Often called the third great silent comedian, after Keaton and Chaplin, Harold Lloyd had a distinctive style that relied on personality more than character. While Keaton had his great stone face, and Chaplin the tramp, Lloyd relied on a sort of everyman persona to appeal to audiences, happy to see the regular guy come out on top for a change. In Safety Last Lloyd plays, as he often does, a young boy from the Midwest going to the city to make it big. In this case he has a girl waiting for him back home. He’ll marry her once he makes a success of himself at the department store where he has been able to get a job. As a clerk he makes very little money, but buys jewelry to send home to his girl, bragging about his big business deals.

The gags are very good, for the most part realistic and without the special effects that can make some silent comedies cartoonish. When he and his roommate, Bill Strother, hide in their coats and hang themselves on the coatrack to avoid detection by the landlady it’s priceless. Another nice extended gag comes when Lloyd has to get to work on time and goes from streetcars to automobiles and finally fakes his way into an ambulance to get there. But things ratchet up when his girl, Mildred Davis, concerned that a man with all that money will be led astray, goes to the city herself to be with him. Lloyd makes good use of the department store setting to deliver some fine comedic moments, especially when Davis shows up and believes he’s the store manager. Lloyd’s foil in those scenes is Westcott Clarke, who does a nice job as the stuffy floorwalker who is always getting Lloyd into trouble.

Of course the big set piece is the climb to the top of the building, a publicity stunt that will earn him a thousand dollars. Lloyd starts the climb, expecting Strother to be on the second floor so that they can exchange clothes and Strother can go the rest of the way to the top. Once Lloyd reaches the clock, the gags are breathtaking. There’s nothing like it in all of silent comedy. Harold Lloyd is not my favorite of the silent comedians, but I can see the attraction. He’s very genuine onscreen, unlike a lot of comedians, and the way he strings his gags together is very logical and makes sense in the overall construction of the plot. He has a good crew of supporting characters who don’t outshine him but still hold up their end of the story. Safety Last is one of Lloyd’s best films and, with good reason, one of the all time great classic silent comedies.