Harold Lloyd was a comic genius and a true gift to the silent age. We all know his masterful performance in the 1923 motion picture Safety Last and the famous Clock Scene. Comedian Harold Lloyd was known for keeping a veil of secrecy over how he achieved the thrill effects in his films. While most of Lloyd’s features had a race or chase as the finale, he is best remembered in the popular memory for Safety Last, his 1923 comedy with an extended, very well crafted sequence where Lloyd climbs a building, while waiting for the professional climber to show up. It is a masterpiece of laughter and suspense. Lloyd was known for not wanting to explain his craft. He said, accurately, that in Safety Last there was no trick work in the camera, and many of the shots are staged so that you can tell it is really him hanging there. To learn how Lloyd filmed the sequence (safely, but not without risk) most of us had to wait for the documentary Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius, produced for British television by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill in 1989. Much more detail has emerged with the research of John Bengtson, author of Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of Harold Lloyd, published in May 2011. He has a fascinating blog which presents his research on Chaplin, Keaton and now Lloyd. In conjunction with a screening of Safety Last in Los Angeles this summer, Bengtson posted a Safety Last! Film Location Tour, which is well worth reading. Here is the famous scene.... https://youtube/watch?v=VFBYJNAapyk
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:09:00 +0000
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