Safety Last! (1923)

User Rating:

8.4/10   

Directors:

Fred C. Newmeyer
Sam Taylor

Writers:

Hal Roach (story)
Sam Taylor (story)

Release Date:

1 April 1923 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Family | Romance | Thriller

Plot:

When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.

Plot Keywords:

Human Fly | Department Store | Stunt | Clock | Publicity Stunt

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Harold Lloyd	...	The Boy
Mildred Davis	...	The Girl
Bill Strother	...	The Pal aka 'Limpy Bill' - construction worker
Westcott Clarke	...	The Floorwalker (Mr. Stubbs) (as Westcott B. Clarke)

Runtime:

73 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

Australia:G | Sweden:Btl

Filming Locations:

Atlantic Hotel, Broadway, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Hal Roach Studios

Trivia:

A stuntman revealed for the first time in the television documentary, "Hollywood" (1980), that Harold Lloyd actually climbed a fake building facade that was constructed over another building's rooftop, positioned so the camera angle could capture the street scene below. The stuntman also revealed that he doubled for Lloyd in the long shots of him climbing the building in the distance. Up until then, even the Time-Life version of Safety Last! (1923) that was aired on PBS contained an opening title declaring that Harold Lloyd climbed the building himself and without the use of a stuntman or trick photography. The stuntman stated that he chose to suppress this information until Lloyd's death, and yet, he did not want to detract from the danger of Lloyd's actual stunt work. Lloyd performed the majority of the stunts himself on the rigged facade over a small platform, which was built near the rooftop's edge and still had to be raised a great height to get the proper street perspective for the camera. The size of the platform did not offer much of a safety net, and had Lloyd fallen, there was the risk he could have tumbled off the platform.

Goofs:

Continuity: "Kick me" disappears from the back of Harold's jacket

Movie Connections:

Referenced in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Without a Net

One of the best contructed full-length comedies of the twenties. Harold Lloyd was not as outrageously inventive as Chaplin, nor as sentimental. His style was a kind of minimalist one, taking a simple idea -- say, being a hasseled salesman in a clothing store and needing desperately to become a success -- and building on that small situation until, by the hilarious climax, he finds himself swinging from the bent minute hand of an oversized clock on the side of a building many stories above the street. (Human flies were popular around this time, as were flagpole sitters and goldfish eaters.) When a mouse crawls up the leg of his trousers, not only does Loyd go through a sort of break dance trying to get rid of it but when he finally does shake it out, the mouse falls down the wall of the building and in the process removes a toupee from a spectator peering out of a lower window. All of this without matte work. Not to say that the earlier scenes in the store aren't extremely amusing, because they are. Loyd had a very mobile face and like most silent comedians a deft physical manner. He makes a splendidly fawning salesman. A very funny movie indeed, and thrilling as well. Any five minutes of the climax, taken at random, makes one dizzier than whole sections of Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone hanging around the Eiger or elsewhere in the Alps. Somehow, Loyd managed to make a self-deprecatory joke out of his athletic skill, while nowadays stars use what amount of it they have as an opportunity to show off their bravery and, when possible, their bulging muscles. Let's hear it for the silents.