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With all the fuss being made about Tom Cruise and his highly dangerous stunt work for the "Mission: Impossible" series, I thought it would be nice to reflect on another celebrity who thrilled audiences with meticulously arranged feats of derring do a century ago: comedian Harold Lloyd.
Most of Harold Lloyd's great comedy movies of the silent era have a basic structure: the Lloyd character would be a naif, a bit of a rube, but still fairly smart and clever. He'd be thrown into a situation where he's in over his head and he'd try to persevere (usually while courting a sweet and pure hearted girl).
Lloyd comedies are also sensitive to issues of class and status. Lloyd's protagonist would usually start out on the lowest rung of the social ladder, and battle to move up. Lloyd's set pieces and even the interstitial captions would often have a clever comment on the situation. (For instance, in "The Freshman," one caption describes Tate University as "a large football stadium with a college attached.")
But the climax of a Lloyd character's struggles would be a feat of almost impossible daring that would cement his social status. There's no better example of this than the climax of 1923's "Safety Last."
[Some film critics see the Lloyd formula as a metaphor for Lloyd as an artist. The theory: Lloyd is well aware that he doesn't have a classic character like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, so he needs something to make his films distinctive. The daredevil stunts are the hook that raises him to their level--a unique form of self-actualization. Do I buy this? Wellllll... Maybe.]
The plot of "Safety Last": Lloyd plays a country boy who travels to the big city to make his fortune, but ends up stuck behind the fabrics counter at a department store. He's sending every penny he can spare back to his girlfriend, and he tells her he's raking it in. Unfortunately, she's so thrilled by his success that she comes to the city ahead of schedule--and our hero has to do some fancy footwork to keep up the charade. Desperate and running out of time, he has a brainstorm: earlier in the film, he saw his roommate do a human fly act to get away from an angry cop. Why not have the guy climb up the side of the department store? It would draw in people from miles around. The general manager loves the idea, and promises our hero $1,000 if he pulls it off. But when it comes time to scale the building, the human fly gets chased off by the cop.
Looks like our boy will have to scale the building himself.
If the general public has one image of Harold Lloyd, it's the country boy dangling from the department store clock. But that's just a fraction of the movie's climax. The extended sequence follows Lloyd's character all the way up the building, inch by excruciating inch--and Lloyd and his directors make it all look unnervingly realistic. Besides the bit with the clock, there's life-threatening obstacles on every level, including a flock of angry pigeons, a fishing net and a weather vane. (I still don't know how he got the pigeons to attack on cue. That was fantastic.) All the while, his roomie occasionally slips the cop and promises to take over; of course, he never does, and each dashed hope of a rescue ratchets up the tension.
Finally, our hero reaches the top... and gets clocked by the weather vane. Woozy, he's about to topple over the edge, when his girlfriend reaches out and yanks him in. (It's a perfect capper, and it assumes a bit of "meta" significance when you find out that Lloyd married Mildred Davis, his leading lady, that same year.)
**********
Lloyd's comedies are still seen as classics today, and have survived when most silent movies have disappeared into the ether. Lloyd inspired a generation of filmmakers (Preston Sturges brought him out of retirement for "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock"), and in a weird way, Cruise's antics are the direct descendants of Lloyd's work. But the M:I series doesn't have the warm, comic heart of Lloyd's films. Will we remember them as fondly a century from now?
Most of Harold Lloyd's great comedy movies of the silent era have a basic structure: the Lloyd character would be a naif, a bit of a rube, but still fairly smart and clever. He'd be thrown into a situation where he's in over his head and he'd try to persevere (usually while courting a sweet and pure hearted girl).
Lloyd comedies are also sensitive to issues of class and status. Lloyd's protagonist would usually start out on the lowest rung of the social ladder, and battle to move up. Lloyd's set pieces and even the interstitial captions would often have a clever comment on the situation. (For instance, in "The Freshman," one caption describes Tate University as "a large football stadium with a college attached.")
But the climax of a Lloyd character's struggles would be a feat of almost impossible daring that would cement his social status. There's no better example of this than the climax of 1923's "Safety Last."
[Some film critics see the Lloyd formula as a metaphor for Lloyd as an artist. The theory: Lloyd is well aware that he doesn't have a classic character like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, so he needs something to make his films distinctive. The daredevil stunts are the hook that raises him to their level--a unique form of self-actualization. Do I buy this? Wellllll... Maybe.]
The plot of "Safety Last": Lloyd plays a country boy who travels to the big city to make his fortune, but ends up stuck behind the fabrics counter at a department store. He's sending every penny he can spare back to his girlfriend, and he tells her he's raking it in. Unfortunately, she's so thrilled by his success that she comes to the city ahead of schedule--and our hero has to do some fancy footwork to keep up the charade. Desperate and running out of time, he has a brainstorm: earlier in the film, he saw his roommate do a human fly act to get away from an angry cop. Why not have the guy climb up the side of the department store? It would draw in people from miles around. The general manager loves the idea, and promises our hero $1,000 if he pulls it off. But when it comes time to scale the building, the human fly gets chased off by the cop.
Looks like our boy will have to scale the building himself.
If the general public has one image of Harold Lloyd, it's the country boy dangling from the department store clock. But that's just a fraction of the movie's climax. The extended sequence follows Lloyd's character all the way up the building, inch by excruciating inch--and Lloyd and his directors make it all look unnervingly realistic. Besides the bit with the clock, there's life-threatening obstacles on every level, including a flock of angry pigeons, a fishing net and a weather vane. (I still don't know how he got the pigeons to attack on cue. That was fantastic.) All the while, his roomie occasionally slips the cop and promises to take over; of course, he never does, and each dashed hope of a rescue ratchets up the tension.
Finally, our hero reaches the top... and gets clocked by the weather vane. Woozy, he's about to topple over the edge, when his girlfriend reaches out and yanks him in. (It's a perfect capper, and it assumes a bit of "meta" significance when you find out that Lloyd married Mildred Davis, his leading lady, that same year.)
**********
Lloyd's comedies are still seen as classics today, and have survived when most silent movies have disappeared into the ether. Lloyd inspired a generation of filmmakers (Preston Sturges brought him out of retirement for "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock"), and in a weird way, Cruise's antics are the direct descendants of Lloyd's work. But the M:I series doesn't have the warm, comic heart of Lloyd's films. Will we remember them as fondly a century from now?
