SAFETY LAST! (1923)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(One of my Top 20 Greatest Films Ever Made)
"Safety Last" is one of those rollickingly rickety, hysterically funny roller-caster rides that packs in the thrills with such delirium, you are often surprised at yourself. It is
the Harold Lloyd movie-movie, the one that cemented his status as the physical comedian of the impossible. It is also one of those movies where you will literally need to hang on to something.
The Boy (Harold Lloyd) is an employee at the fabrics counter of the De Vore department store. His roots are from an unnamed small town where his hopeful future-wife-to-be (played by Lloyd's real-life wife, Mildred Davis) hopes he makes it big in the city. Well, he has a job but he is not a manager as he claims. Guess who decides to make a surprise visit in the city to see the Boy doing his managerial duties? This is the standard Lloyd comic routine where he works in his fast-paced physical comic timing, in this case proving to his fiancee that he is the manager. This includes last-minute exits and entrances into the manager's office, and the pressing of many alarm buttons for the various workers to enter the office.
When the Boy finds that his roommate, Bill (Bill Strother, his sole acting role), can scale a building like nobody's business, he comes up with a bright idea - convince the De Vore department store that hundreds of customers will show up for an event where his human fly friend will climb the De Vore building and reach the top floor. Plus, there is a 1000 dollars prize at stake!
"Safety Last" has plenty of terrific gags, most of them centered on Lloyd either making it to work on time or handling his customers in a timely fashion. There is nothing funnier than seeing Lloyd pretend he is a mannequin; control a crowd of customers (especially one indecisive customer that anyone who has ever worked in retail can relate to), or squeeze himself into a coat hanging on a rack! Still, the film is mostly iconic for the Lloyd set piece that none of his contemporaries (Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin) have ever attempted. Rumors have surfaced that Lloyd had the assistance of his human fly to scale the De Vore skyscraper. There are probably many trick shots here to emphasize scale or distortion thereof, but you almost always see the street of onlookers below so you have to believe (in a world where CGI and computers were not invented yet) that Lloyd is really putting his life on the line. No matter how he did it, he accomplished it with tactless skill. Whether it is a mouse running up his pant leg or seeing him dangling from a huge clock (the most iconic image and central to the film's theme) or a host of pigeons pecking him, the sequence is easily the most thrilling, hair-raising, goose-pimpling footage ever recorded in film history. Most of it seems real and death-defying enough to make your skin crawl, your nerves jangle and your hands clammy (back in the day, it was rumored that some filmgoers fainted watching this sequence). Lloyd successfully recaptured the magic of this sequence in 1930's "Feet First" but it is this film that really packs on the thrills and chills.
"Safety Last" is all about ambition for its hero to literally climb his way to the top and make his fiancee happy for him. Antiquated notions aside, the film is superior Lloyd entertainment with an emphasis on physical stunts that will astound everyone. He created a world of wonder and an iconic image of the hapless hero with trademark horn-rimmed glasses and we can be happy that it is forever captured on celluloid.
