It's not Harold Lloyd's best film, nor my personal favorite, nor his snappiest, warmest, or funniest film (different ones, all), but "Safety Last" is the sky's-the-limit icon for Harold Lloyd. You know the shot; now see where it came from.But first, you have to sit through a long introductory section that is by turns inventive and contrived, a taffy pull which drags even as it offers up some inventive gags. Comedy is hard, even sometimes for the audience. But what a payoff.The story is simple: Harold works at a department store and wants to impress his fiancée (Mildred Davis) by buying her fancy things he can't afford as a sign of imaginary wealth. "She's just got to believe that I'm successful – until I am." His campaign works too well: Mildred's mother sends her daughter to snap up Harold before another woman can.I find Mildred Davis the weak link in this film. She plays a thin character, rather unlikable in the way she fixates on status and relishes Harold ordering people around. Another actress might have played her as an amusing gold-digger, or else a zany flapper with suspicions about Harold's game. Davis tended to stick with sweet and simple, and it feels wrong here.There's also the contrivances, another frequent Lloyd qualm of mine. The opening shot is one of those false opens Harold liked to do, in this case a train station set up to look like a gallows. An overhead mail hook resembles a noose and Mildred's father is a minister, so there's a momentary disassociation, except it's the first scene, so it's forgettable immediately. So is a bit where Harold gets stuck in a laundry truck driven by a deaf driver, making him late for work.But amid the whiffs there are hits, like a scene in a crowded trolley and another about dodging a landlady. As the film moves along, it gets much better.To appreciate "Safety Last," I had to realize from the DVD commentary that the film was constructed in reverse. Lloyd and his team (including writer-directors Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor) had their ending all set, and shot it first: Harold on top of that building, hanging on for dear life. The trick for them was figuring out how he gets up there.When I thought of "Safety Last" that way, the contrivances and gags became much more clever and enjoyable, because they are serving a larger end without my realizing it. Why would Harold go up the 12- story Bolton Building? To draw a crowd and impress his girl. Why does he do it himself, when his roommate (Bill Strother) is a high- rise climber? Because Bill is being chased by a cop. Why is Bill being chased by a cop? You get the picture.A real joy of "Safety Last" is seeing members of Lloyd's stock company show up, including Noah Young as the cop, Charles Stevenson and Anna Townsend from "Grandma's Boy" as an ambulance attendant and a customer, and even Roy Brooks, a fixture of many Lloyd shorts, leaning out a window."That's the best one you pulled yet!" Brooks tells Lloyd as he's clinging from the ledge. Is this a call-back to "Never Weaken," a short made two years before where Brooks played Lloyd's pal while Harold climbed another high-rise chasing after Mildred? I can see Harold dotting the i there, even as he also lets his buddy give "Safety Last" its first and most enduring review.Funny how some people talk about Lloyd's genius but then almost sheepishly admit he wasn't quite risking his neck on that building like he appears to, instead of realizing that makes him even more of a genius.

I'm not an expert on the silent era by any means, but I have to say, this seems like a must-see movie for those who are interested in this period of filmmaking. It includes the iconic moment of Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock face many stories off the ground, and also many wonderful sight gags and a cute story.We see Lloyd accidentally getting on a horse-drawn ice wagon instead of the train in the beginning, as he goes off to the city to earn enough money to get married to his sweetheart. We see him and his buddy putting their coats on, hanging themselves up on hooks, and pulling their legs up out of sight to avoid the landlady who is looking for rent in a brilliant scene. He gets a job as a salesman, and we see him handle a crowd of women all going berserk over a fabric sale in all sorts of inventive ways.The scenes of him climbing perilously up a building wall take place over the final 20 minutes of the film, and has him dodging nuts dumped out by a child, being mobbed by pigeons, being hit with a net from above and a giant wooden beam for the side before reaching the clock face. He then hangs from the clock hands in a scene that is both funny and thrilling, since you know it's real, and the framing of the scene is absolutely perfect. As he ascends he'll also dangle from a rope, have a mouse crawl up his leg, and walk precipitously on the edge of a couple of ledges.You're not going to be laughing out loud, but Lloyd is likable and charming, and you will probably marvel at his inventiveness, as well as the danger in performing the climbing stunt, which he did himself for the most part, with nothing but a mattress a few stories below (off-screen) for safety. It was 'safety last' in the real sense as well! Definitely worth seeing if you get a chance.

It's interesting to watch Safety Last! and see that in at least one big way it served as a prototype for romantic comedies for ages to come. Look at the scenario before us: Harold Lloyd as the Boy (let's just call him Harold Lloyd) is in love with The Girl (a very good, if two-dimensional, Mildred Davis) and leaves the country- side to find work in the city to make more money for the both of them. He constantly buys her jewelry, making her think he's doing very well for himself, which isn't the case - he works in a garment store and is basically another clerk serving the gaggles of frenzied women looking for their fabric - and this gives her the impression that she should go to see him. She does, and he puts up the facade further that he's the general manager of the store. And it get to the point that it sets off the main conflict/climax of the film: they can get married (right!) and get a house... if he gets a $1,000 - and how does he do that? Attract more people to the store by, what else, having a friend climb a building. Yeah, his friend. Oops.Romantic comedies of the modern age are loaded with these misunderstandings - if the protagonist just told the other lead what was going on for real, the story would collapse. One might almost want to put the finger of blame on Safety Last! for so many movies since that have made the Deception-Plot-Contrivance an accepted norm. And YET, here it does work, because there is a sweetness to all of the comedy, while Lloyd goes about in his bewildered state, trying to keep up appearances for his girl, and finding himself, ultimately, hanging off the roof of a building. Whether he finally tells her at the end is hardly the point; we see him on the ledge of a building with all manner of a dog, a mouse, a painter with a 'gun' (woops), and the cop who's chasing his buddy (who should be doing this) up the building, and there's all the excitement and suspense you need! If Chaplin was the Elvis of silent comedy, and Keatin the Chuck Berry, then it could be said that Harold Lloyd was Buddy Holly: the seemingly unassuming nerdy-guy with the glasses and 'normal' demeanor, who, just from the look of him in this film, is set the most in our world. Not that the other silent comics didn't have their foot set in reality, but the one in Safety Last is a little less fantastical, and its death- defying nature really comes as a last resort for the character. But I put Lloyd in the same camp as those guys just as Holly with the old rock-n-rollers for the reason of guts and ingenious comic timing: Lloyd knew how to get his effect, and would not stoop to pulling ridiculous gags like getting a 'Kick Me' sign on a cop's jacket, or pretending his lady had fainted to get out of his general manager's office.Safety Last's romantic-comic contrivance doesn't bother me, and actually works really well, because the movie is just stuffed with contrivances at every turn, everything is all based on a misunderstanding and trying to hide away to not get caught; the opening has this right away as Harold takes the wrong suitcase - a baby, actually - and almost misses his train by hopping on another car. Another classic moment comes by having to hide from his landlord with his friend, by getting behind their coats and hanging from the hangers! (This gets an immediate call-back a moment later, just as funny to me if not funnier due to it being repeated). And Lloyd and his writers (including Hal Roach) are just splendid at making manic comic moments which are over 90 years old but are still fresh - see when the mass of frantic ladies are trying to get what they need at the store, and to get just one little old lady what she needs he exclaims there's a $50 bill on the floor(!) If anything, for me, the mid-section in the store, showing Harold Lloyd at his garment-store job having to serve the people and the many, many mishaps and gags that ensue, along with those that come when the Girl comes around and things get even crazier and wackier, may even be funnier and stronger than the final climb - at least, I should say, in laughs. Not that the comedy doesn't continue during the climb, it does. But it's really more of the sense that 'Wait, hey, is he REALLY going to fall?!' that makes the climb sequence so exhilarating to watch. Sadly, if one looks up the trivia, it spoils if it was really real - some of it did have stunt work, and it wasn't done completely without a platform, though that was mostly for the camera. That I didn't think about that watching the climb though, that I thought it was just little Harold trying to climb up, one brick layer at a time, is kind of a testament to the magic of movies, silly as it sounds.I bought into what Lloyd and the filmmakers were doing, making things suspenseful step by step, and as long as you can do that, then you're in great hands. Safety Last! is just behind the masterworks of Chaplin and Keaton in terms of spot-on timing and clever craft for gags and jokes, and probably has the same level of verve at the end as The General. If it doesn't have the most honest main character, why carp - more chances for comedy have to occur this way sometimes, otherwise it just becomes a story of a guy in a garment store with his Girl.

Thanks to Criterion to have made a Blu-Ray for this movie. If not for the Blu-Ray I doubt if I would have ever seen this.I know of Chaplin and of Keaton as the comic geniuses of 1920's but then along with them was another one called the "The Third One" and his name is Harold Lloyd. And finally, I discovered him and I am so very happy now. The hanging from a multi story building from the watch on the wall, seems to be such an iconic thing in 1920's that its referred many a time in so many movies later and as recently as HUGO. I love that shot and it's called "dangling from the skyscraper", and I suppose anybody who watches this shall really fall for such originality. Also, take a note of a title, SAFETY LAST which means that let's through caution to the winds and just do it. It's an antonym of SAFETY FIRST.The premise which comes in the latter part actually that sets up the whole film is so wonderful that for most part, we shall be laughing 90 years after a film is made, if still that tickles your ribs, then it's simply great. That's what these great movies do. And certainly, this stands right up there. If Chaplin was a genius in humane stories and Keaton was so in making us laugh with his extreme stunts, then Lloyd made me laugh with his simplicity, with his histrionics and with his stunts. It was so very refreshing to see all this in an era where films were so pristine. The sound, rather the music was pitch perfect echoing the emotions of the characters and it was deliberately made funny, which I loved it. There was a time, when the protagonist had to fight against the wails set by the society. Expectations are much higher from family and friends and he has do some extraordinary things to make them happy. Directors, Newmeyer and Sam Taylor must be applauded a great deal for they have pulled a nearly impossible act in 1920's. And, yes Harold Lloyd steals it like a champion, salutations for the whole team. This movie is like Serendipity, which I discovered by accident and loved every bit of it.This movie for sure, is going to be a great movie forever and ever. A 5/5 for this.