Safety Last! (1923)
9/10
The 1920's were halcyon years for cinema comedy…
9 August 2005
Warning: Spoilers
The 1920's were halcyon years for cinema comedy, and the inspired products of that period are among the silent screen's finest offerings… These films include Harold Lloyd's amusing masterpiece, "Safety Last!;" "The General" and "The Navigator," both starring Buster Keaton; and dozens of short films featuring the mismatched comic duo, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy…

There was certainly no melancholia in the films of Harold Lloyd, who may have lacked the depth of Chaplin and Keaton but who was every bit as funny…

Lloyd was working as an extra on the Universal lot when he met Hal Roach, who subsequently produced a series of one-reelers starring Lloyd as a character named Lonesome Luke, a frank imitation of Chaplin's Little Tramp…

Later Lloyd was to own character, that of a decent, optimistic, and eager young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and always emerged triumphant from the incredible scrapes he got into…

Sight gags were Lloyd's specialty, as "Safety Last," his noisy and disorderly funny film, was to prove… Playing a department store clerk who, through a combination of circumstances, is forced into posing as a professional "human fly," Lloyd climbs up the side of a tall skyscraper as traffic whizzes below… You will surely squealed with delight as Lloyd missed his footing and grabbed the hands of a huge clock—only to have the face of the clock open out, leaving Lloyd hanging in midair…
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