Review of Safety Last! (1923) by Lise B — 10 Nov 2005

Harold Lloyd's major films are due for release in a DVD retrospective and the attention is long overdue. If you're a movie buff you've probably seen a still of a man with round eyeglasses hanging from a broken clock face on the outer wall of a building, far above moving street traffic. That's this film's most famous shot.

Lloyd plays a character known only as The Boy who leaves a small town hoping to make good. He becomes a routine shipping clerk and tries to impress his girlfriend back home by sending her expensive gifts. She's impressed, all right, and comes to see him thinking he's a successful man ready for marriage. In a fit of embarrassment Lloyd pretends to be the store manager. Realizing his mistake afterward, he has to achieve something truly impressive in order to keep her love.

He doesn't exactly set out to climb the outside of a twelve story building without wires or safety equipment. He just wants the real store manager's $1000 award for setting up a stunt that will draw more customers. Lloyd's roommate is known as a human fly. He can climb anything with no wires or nets. So of course Lloyd nominates his roommate to climb the building. And just as naturally, when Lloyd's reputation is on the line his roommate can't get there soon enough.

Lloyd starts up the building in the hope his tardy friend will replace him on the second floor. Each story presents a new danger. A mouse runs up his pants leg. A swinging window nearly sends him to his death. Finally he's clinging to a disintegrating clock just below the upper ledge.

If you watch movies for thrills you'll get genuine ones here. In 1923 there was very little a filmmaker could do to fake these kinds of scenes. A few camera angles and lenses heighten the effect. According to some accounts a double substitutes occasionally. Yet for the most part it's the star himself clinging to the outer bricks of an actual downtown skyscraper, protected only by an offscreen pile of mattresses a few storeys below. Though the film conceals it, Lloyd had lost two fingers of his right hand from a failed stunt four years before. Never mind the age of this film: it makes the viewer's palms sweat.

Harold Lloyd was as famous as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton during the 1920s. Lloyd's films actually grossed more at the box office. If you love old comedy this is one to watch. Lloyd has always been a favorite among film historians. With his classics becoming available again the public has a chance to see why.