Safety Last! (1923)

Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor. Starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Westcott Clarke, Noah Young, Earl Mohan.

The Boy (Lloyd) wants to marry The Girl (Davis), but first needs to make good in the big city; complications, of course, ensue, and he winds up climbing up the side of a twelve-story building as part of a publicity stunt. Not Lloyd’s best, but does feature the most iconic gag in his entire catalog (and one of the most recognizable in all of silent cinema): the plucky young protagonist dangling several stories in the air, clinging to the hands of a clock mounted onto the side of a building. Getting there is good fun, but it’s short on wild comic inspiration and side-splitters overall. Suffers a bit from whiplash sympathies—one minute, our poor hero is being unfairly terrorized by hostile shoppers and snooty management, and the next minute, he’s piling the mountain of lies even higher when duping his beloved. That absence of rooting interest keeps this laffer from reaching greatness, but there are great moments all the same.

72/100