Silent Movie Blogathon – Safety Last (1923)

This is the first of 2 reviews that are part of the Silent Cinema Blogathon being hosted by Crystal over at In The Good Old Days Of Classic Hollywood.

Tnx Crystal!
 Number of Times Seen – 1 (20 Oct 2015)

Brief Synopsis – A young man thinks of a publicity stunt to get more customers into the store he works in but things go wrong and he must perform the dangerous stunt himself.

My Take on it – When Crystal announced this blogathon, I was a bit skeptical because despite having seen thousands of movies in my life, the number of films from the silent era on that list are few and far between.

I am quite familiar with Charlie Chaplin’s comedic work during this time, but I decided to use this opportunity to check out a movie that I had heard of and seen clips from starring Harold Lloyd.

This movie was really funny from start to end and it proved to me that Chaplin wasn’t alone in his quest to add so much comedy and laughter to the movies of this era.

The story itself makes sense too which is an added bonus instead of just having slapstick scenes spliced together.

Now that ive seen this, I finally understand both of the homages/references to this movie in the original Back to the Future (1985); the clock in the opening scene with a man hanging from it and of course Doc Brown’s famous clock tower scene at the climax.

If Lloyd’s stuff is all this good, I’m gonna have a lot of fun watching some more.

Bottom Line – Hilarious movie that proves that there were more silent era comic geniuses than just Chaplin. Lloyd does a wonderful job telling this story while making us laugh the whole time. Love how Back to the Future (1985) was able to have two homages to the most classic scene of this film. Highly recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – During the famous clock tower stunt, Harold Lloyd is not as far from the ground as he appears. The building on which he climbs was actually a fake wall constructed on the roof of an actual skyscraper and skillfully photographed to maintain the illusion. (From IMDB)

Rating – Oscar Worthy

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