Safety Last!
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"While not as well-remembered these days as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd remains a master of silent comedy. Safety Last! is his most iconic feature, with a thrilling climactic set-piece that sees him hanging from a high-rise clock. It’s a masterclass in slapstick and suspense."
— MUBI's take
Safety Last!
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1994.
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Safety Last! is a 1923 American silent romantic-comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. It includes one of the most famous images from the silent-film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd's status as a major figure in early motion pictures. It is still popular at revivals, and it is viewed today as one of the great film comedies.
The film's title is a play on the common expression "safety first", which prioritizes safety as a means to avoid accidents, especially in workplaces. Lloyd performed some of the climbing stunts himself, despite having lost a thumb and forefinger four years earlier in a film accident.
Why It Rocks
- It's considered to be possibly Harold Lloyd's finest film as it helped establish the narrative structure he'd use almost exclusively for the rest of his career. Keep in mind, that Lloyd did all of his own stunts and risked danger with his antics just to deliver on his recipe for a successful thrill picture. There was no trick photography employed in the making of the film neither during shooting nor during post-production. Not mirrors, not animation, not glass shots, not double exposures, and not rear-screen projection of previously photographed backgrounds. Although Bill Strother doubled for Lloyd in the long shots, and climbed the international bank building.
- As Lloyd had been inspired by a popular stunt performer known as "the human fly," the film is basically an attempt at a feature-length film that would give audiences the same excitement. There's an interesting premise where Lloyd's character seeks fame and fortune in the big city and ends up as an unwitting human fly forced to scale a tall building.
- While Hal Roach's produced films typical contained likable lead characters and relatable stories, audiences especially identified with Lloyd’s character -- a department store clerk -- trying to win a $1000 advertising award and how he is driven by the American success ethic and ambitious, optimistic spirit of the 1920s.
- The climbing sequence that takes up a half-hour and the end of the film is a textbook example of the writers developed material for Lloyd's character. A drunken bystander puts into motion the reasons why Harold -- rather than Bill -- climbs the building. Complications start piling up as he climbs -- pigeons, a mouse, a dog, a flagpole, a tennis net, a photographer's flash -- with all of them being realistic enough to provide suspension and risks for the Glass Character.
- The hour or so of story the appears prior to the famous climb, is worked over fairly well, despite there not being much of a plot to speak of. There's a seven minute sequence where Harold's character tries to get work via trolley, two cars and an ambulance containing over a dozen staged gags, with more set-up and pay-off than a simple pratfall.
- Impressive set design and cinematography considering the studio built sets on the rooftops of several downtown Los Angeles buildings to enhance the illusion, and the camera angles created the necessary illusion of distance and perspective, always keeping the street below in full view. Cameramen shot in such a way to match the horizon and capture the height and the sheer drop but miss the safety platform below.
- It features possibly the most recognizable and parodied image in silent comedy: Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock at a high altitude.
The Only Bad Qualities
- Some of the film's attempts at having a plotline may seem random or an excuse to go into the slapstick of a short film.
- Lloyd's character may seem arbitrary as well, as he's inconsisent with how smart he may be. Maybe there's a harsh edge to his jokes, some cruelty in his supporting characters, or a racist taint to Jewish and black figures (despite Lloyd not actually being racist, and not intending to offend anyone)
Trivia
- Prior to the film, Harold Lloyd developed his comedy chops as a member of Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedy troupe, and then later in a group founded by actor-turned-producer Hal Roach. He developed a number of comic personas – including the popular Lonesome Luke – before landing on the bespectacled everyman character that would become his most enduring signature.
- Harold Lloyd was inspired to include the film’s famous climbing scene after watching Bill Strother, a real-life steeplejack who was known as “the Human Spider,” climb the side of a Los Angeles building as a stunt. Lloyd later hired Strother to perform in his film. Strother’s character name, “Limpy Bill,” reportedly came into use after Strother himself broke his leg just prior to filming.
- Although Harold Lloyd performed many of his own stunts, a double was used in long shots, and a circus performer was used in the scene in which he dangles from a rope.
- The female star of the film – credited as “The Girl,” opposite Harold Lloyd’s “The Boy” – was played by Mildred Davis, Lloyd’s real-life wife. The couple was married the year that the film was released and remained so until her death in 1969.
- The climbing was filmed using a series of buildings from 1st Street to 9th Street in Los Angeles, CA, including the International Bank Building at the corner of Temple and Spring streets, and a building on the southeast corner of 9th and Broadway. The buildings were of varying heights and sets were constructed on the roofs to match the exterior of the primary building, so that it appeared as if star Harold Lloyd was climbing a single building all the way up.
- By the time of the release, Harold Lloyd was short a thumb and forefinger on his right hand – which was mangled in a 1919 promotional photoshoot during which Lloyd inadvertently lit a real bomb he assumed was a prop. For his subsequent films, Lloyd wore a glove to conceal the lack of digits.
- Martial arts legend Jackie Chan has spoken of the awe he feels for silent film stars – including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Safety Last! star Harold Lloyd – as well as the inspiration he’s taken from their work. He noted that those pioneering stars didn’t have the same production protections that stars enjoy today, and that, with regard to the fearlessness he’s exhibited in his own work, he “learned everything from them".
- The iconic image of Harold Lloyd hanging from the face of a clock has proven its cultural endurance across nearly a century of homages, references and parodies – and in 1994, the film was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Registry of culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films. Lloyd himself was honored with a special Academy Award® in 1953 for his contribution to motion picture comedy.