Safety Last (no 37)

by Allan Fish

(USA 1923 70m) DVD1/2

I’ll be back as soon as I ditch the cop

p  Harold Lloyd  d  Sam Taylor, Fred Newmeyer  w  Harold Lloyd, Tim Whelan, Sam Taylor, Hal Roach  ph  Walter Lundin  ed  Thomas J.Crizer  m  Carl Davis  art  Fred Guiol

Harold Lloyd (Harold), Mildred Davis (Mildred), Noah Young (the cop), Bill Strothers (Limpy Bill), Westcott B.Clarke (Stubbs, the floorwalker),

Safety Last is one of those movies cherished in the memory long before you actually see the full film.  My first glimpses of it were probably exactly the same as many other people’s in the UK, courtesy of a half hour teatime show on BBC2 showcasing Lloyd’s comedy, with an inimitable nine note theme tune unforgettable to those who heard it.  Of course that glimpse was only an edited version of Last and, indeed, of its most famous sequence, but it was enough for me.  I would only have been about ten years old, but to a childhood friend and I, it was pure bliss.  Even now, over twenty years later, though I reaffirm that fact that The Kid Brother is Lloyd’s best feature, there is nothing on his CV to match Last.  It’s one to cherish.

            Harold is a country boy from Great Bend who goes to the city to make his fortune so he can send for his beloved Mildred.  “She’s just got to believe I’m successful until I am” he tells new found friend Bill, and he spends every cent he has on buying her pretty trinkets and doing without such comparative expendables as food.  His life made into a living hell by a supercilious floorwalker at the store where he works (a man “muscle-bound from patting himself on the back” the caption reads), he cooks up a publicity stunt (in more ways than one) to have his expert climber friend Bill climb the building where his place of work, the De Vore department store, is situated.  Unfortunately a hostile cop has his eye on Bill after an earlier encounter and Harold has to undertake the climb himself.

            Though that iconic climb is what people remember, it’s somewhat unfair to the rest of the film, which showcases Lloyd’s resourcefulness and unique talent as a visual comedian.  Think of that opening scene, with Lloyd behind bars, seemingly being consoled by his loved ones.  A noose hangs proud behind and, when a man sporting a uniform and a pastor come into shot, we can only assume one thing.  That is until the camera cuts 180 degrees and we see that it isn’t a noose at all and that the people in question have come to see him off at the station.  Even better there’s the brilliant sequence where Lloyd is harangued by a gaggle of middle aged harridans after different fabrics in a sale and fighting over his attention like dogs over a bone (at one point using a ruler to duel with a woman with an umbrella who keeps prodding him).  There’s a seamless genius about the scene that is impossible to relate in words, but which brings pleasure in the recollection as I write. 

            Yet who am I kidding, it’s the final ascent that sticks in the mind, and quite right, too.  Is there a more iconic death-defying sequence in cinematic comedy than Lloyd’s climb up the Bolton Building?  Though back projection, a safety net and a double were used on certain shots, the net was several floors below and the climbing itself was all Lloyd’s.  A climb that would see him encounter all sorts of obstacles; bird seed, four pecking pigeons, a huge net, an old woman with an irritating passion for stating the obvious, a plank, an unstable clock face, a rope or two, a ferocious dog, a dodgy flagpole, a mouse (which goes up his trouser leg), and a wind chime on the roof.  Each one you can see coming, but you find yourself laughing in spite of this.  As we see him climb up the side of the walls, modern viewers might think of Spiderman, but Last is not only funnier, but also a great deal more exciting and thrilling.  It’s a testament to not only Lloyd’s genius but to the spirit of silent comedy in general, a film admittedly with almost Victorian values on romance, but a very modern attitude to danger and the tedium of the working week.  Our friend Bill never ditches that blasted cop, but once you’ve seen Last, you’ll never consider ditching it from your memory.