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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful:-
A Climb to Remember, 20 November 2005
Author:
theowinthrop from United States
It has truly said that while THE FRESHMAN, or SPEEDY, or THE KID
BROTHER, are better films, SAFETY LAST is the film that everyone who
never saw a Harold Lloyd comedy recalls. That is because in one moment
on the screen he engraved himself forever into the minds of movie
lovers (something, oddly enough, Chaplin and Keanton never quite did in
a single moment of film). Lloyd, of course, became immortal for being
the man suspended from the clock of the building he was climbing in the
concluding half hour of this wonderful comedy. There is more to the
film than that of course. Harold, here in love with his home town
girlfriend Mildred Davis (who was his wife in real life), has
sacrificed money to buy her jewelry, and has been sending her letters
lying about his business success. He claims he is a bigwig at the
department store he is a clerk in. Actually he is constantly in hot
water with the pompous floor walker, Mr. Stubbs (Westcott Clarke).
After he sends a second gift to Mildred she decides to join him in the
city. He manages to pass himself off as the store's general manager
(don't ask - you have to see how he does it). But she wants to get
married now - he's making enough supposedly for a house. His best
friend is a human fly (Bill Strother), so Harold proposes to the actual
general manager a publicity stunt wherein a mystery man will climb the
department store facade (15 stories). Unfortunately, Police Officer
Noah Young has a grudge against Strother, and keeps preventing him from
climbing. So Harold has to climb up the side - with Strother promising
to take over at the right moment once he shakes off Young.
Although Chaplin and Keaton's physical comedy included dangers to them
(Keaton and the water fall in OUR HOSPITALITY, for example), the climb
up the store's facade is considered in a class by itself. Certainly it
is one of the few comedy stunts that have been taken apart and analyzed
over the years (even when we know how it was done, it still impresses
us). The stunt got a life of it's own, beyond the famous clock
photograph, because the film's theme is the success theme in American
business life. Harold wants to make it in business, and he's just a
down-trodden clerk. To make it rich, and to get his girl, he has to
risk all on a $1,000.00 gamble. He does in the end, with his "climbing"
having been cleverly compared to "climbing" the business ladder or
getting ahead in America. When he seems to retreat at one point some of
the onlookers shake their heads and point upward. Once he is on his
route to success, he can't turn back.
The film is more fun than that particularly good interpretation makes
it sound. It deserves a 10 for it's success at remaining a humorous and
lasting peace of cinematic comic art, and a fitting monument to that
comedy master Harold Lloyd.
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