Safety Last! (1923)

As with Buster Keaton until yesterday, I've only seen one Harold Lloyd film before and it was a short. So here’s me repeating the trick, this time with what is indisputably Lloyd’s most famous full length film.

It’s interesting that, judging by their respective shorts, I much preferred Keaton to Lloyd. Yet I found Safety Last to be very funny indeed, much more so than Sherlock Jr. The social mores may have dated- Harold needs to be successful and marry Mildred before there’s any question of getting inside those knickers of hers- but the humour hasn’t, even if the 1920s department store looks absurd in 20-9 with its silly hierarchies, popinjay “floorwalker” and sales of material to old ladies so they can make their own dresses.

No; the humour is straightforwardly funny, with the visual humour matched by some refreshing verbal wit from the intertitles, and the plot is simple, easy to follow and inexorably leading towards the big concluding set piece of Harold climbing up a tall building unaided, with lots of comical perils befalling him in a tour de force of spectacle which, importantly, never forgets the humour.

I never assumed, from the little is seen, that Harold Lloyd could be as funny as this. I was wrong. As things stand this is my favourite full length silent comedy.