The Films:
One of the greatest silent comedians was Harold Lloyd. He's known
for the death defying stunts that provoked laughter in generations of film
goers, but also for his 'glasses' character, an optimistic and enthusiastic
young man who tackles live with vim. He didn't start out with this
character though, it took him many years to develop the persona that would
make him famous. He started out working for Hal Roach with a character
named Willie Work, a tramp and obvious attempt to cash in on Chaplin's
success. These films did very poorly; at one point Lloyd said that
none of them were ever sold and distributed, and by 1928 no prints were
still in existence.
After a brief stint with Mack Sennett at Keystone, Lloyd returned to
Roach and together they created another Chaplin impersonation, Lonesome
Luke. These were immensely popular and the distributor, Pathé,
couldn't get enough of them. Lloyd didn't like the character however,
since he wasn't original. After mulling some ideas over, he came
up with what he called the "Glasses Character" a young ordinary looking
man with glasses who uses his ingenuity to get out of scrapes. Roach
and Pathé didn't want to make films with this new character since
the Lonesome Luke films were doing so well, but Lloyd finally convinced
Roach to give the character a shot, and by 1918, Lloyd had quit the Luke
comedies and was only playing his glasses character.
Kino, in association with Lobster Films, has released a second set of
Harold Lloyd shorts. (Be sure to read Stuart Galbraith IV's great
review of the first volume here.)
This time they've included 10 one-, two-, and three-reel comedies on a
two DVD set. These include some of his best work including his first
two three-reel films, Now or Never and Among Those Present
and some of his classic thrill pictures including High and Dizzy
and Never Weaken. This is an excellent set that has some outrageously
funny shorts.
The films in this collection are:
Disc One:
Two Gun Gussie (1918): This one
reeler has Harold playing piano in a bar in the old west. The Sheriff
receives a letter from a neighboring lawman warning him about a tough characters
who's headed his way. As luck would have it, the villain is in the
bar and switches his picture, enclosed with the letter, with that of innocent
Harold. The Sheriff and the rest of the town's people now think the
mild mannered piano player is a tough hombre and quake at hsi every move,
something that Harold plays up for all it's worth.
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Harold tries to impress the
town-folk in Two Gun Gussie.
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This was a funny comedy that is severely hampered by the fact that many
short sections, most lasting less than a second or two, are missing.
This not only ruins the pacing and flow of the story, but you can't tell
what some of the gags are, part of it is missing. You can still get
a feel for what the film must have looked like, and I'm glad that they
included it, but it isn't nearly as funny as it should be.
The City Slicker (1918): Another
one-reeler, and this one is complete. Harold travels from the city
to a rural hotel that has advertised for position. They want someone
to modernize the hotel for them, and Harold gets the job. He soon
installs many fancy push-button gadgets that are supposed to make the hotel
appeal to refined folk: beds the slide into walls and bathtubs that hide
in fireplaces. (I noticed he didn't install central heat.)
This type of story has been done many times, Keaton would do something
similar in The Electric House (1922), but it works well with Lloyd
in the lead. There are some amusing gags, and while this is a fun
short, it isn't a standout.
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Harold flirts with his leading
lady and real-life girlfriend Bebe Daniels in The City Slicker.
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The Non-Stop Kid (1918): All the
bachelors in town are after Miss Wiggle (Bebe Daniels), but her father
wants her to marry Prof. M. T. Noodle. Harold tries to win the beauty
by impersonating the learned gentleman, with amusing results. This
is an interesting early "glasses character" comedy. Only a year earlier,
Lloyd was still making Lonesome Luck comedies. In this film he's
come up with a lot of the traits that his character would become famous
for, but not all of them. Harold is resourceful and optimistic, but
he still isn't very far from his slapstick roots. There's a mean
streak when he laughs at the other suitors being kicked out by Mr. Wiggle,
and when he arranges to have a police officer hit Prof. Noodle over the
head knocking him out. He's very close to the character that would
make him a superstar though.
Ring up the Curtain (1919): Harold
is the stage hand at a theater who falls in love with the leading lady
of a traveling troupe. There are all sorts of mishaps backstage and
an extended sequence with a snake that scares everyone witless. This
is a minor Lloyd comedy. After coming so close to his glasses character
in The Non-Stop Kid, here he reverts to average (at best) slapstick.
His character isn't trying to better himself or rise up the ladder, he
seems content sweeping up the stage. Even worse than that, this film
doesn't have any of internal logic. Things just sort of happen, not
for any specific reason, just because they might be funny. They usually
aren't. The ending gag in particular was very against character and
not very funny.
Captain Kidd's Kid (1920): The boy
(Harold Lloyd) has lived life on the straight and narrow until the night
of his bachelor party when he cuts loose; the one and only time in his
life. As the movie opens, Harold's butler (Snub Pollard) is trying
to wake him after the big shin-dig. The phone rings, and it's Harold's
intended (Bebe Daniels): her mother heard about the huge party and the
wedding is now off. The mother and daughter are going off to the
Canary Islands for a vacation, and Harold pursues them. Booking a
trip on an ocean liner, Harold manages to get thrown off the ship, followed
by his faithful butler, and then captured by a ship load of female pirates!
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In Captain Kidd's Kid,
Harold is overjoyed to be captured by "girl pirates."
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This was Lloyd's second two-reel film and is a very enjoyable film.
He really does well in the longer format. It starts off slowly with
some fairly standard types of gags, but it picks up after the boy goes
to sea. I loved the scene where Harold and Snub are in the ocean,
hanging to a life preserver and they see the pirate ship coming.
They hurriedly turn around and swin the other way trying to escape when
one of the women stands up in the row boat and says "I think you are really
mean to run away." When they find out they are being chased by attractive
women, they change their minds quickly and swim back.
This was Bebe Daniels' last film with Lloyd. His long time leading
lady and off screen sweetheart was moving up to feature films. Though
they had talked of marriage, Harold wanted to concentrate on his career,
and so they broke off their relationship, though they stayed friends for
life.
From Hand to Mouth (1920): A girl
(Mildred Davis) will inherit a fortune if she can prove her identity by
midnight, if not, her half-brother gets the money. Her brother has
hired a gang of crooks to kidnap her to make sure she doesn't collect.
Meanwhile a boy (Harold Lloyd) is down on his luck and can't feed himself,
much less the young orphan and her dog that attach themselves to Harold
in the first reel. The boy gets offered some easy money to help kidnap
the girl, but when he realizes what the group is planning on doing, he
wants no part of it. The film ends in a race against time that foreshadows
a lot of Lloyds feature films.
Made right after Captain Kidd's Kid, this movie features the
first appearance of Mildred Davis in a Lloyd film. Davis would go
on to be Harold's leading lady for the next four years until she married
Lloyd and retired from the screen. They would remain married until
his death 46 years later.
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From Hand to Mouth had
Lloyd trying to tug at the heart-strings like Chaplin did so well.
He was only moderately successful.
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This was Lloyd's most Chaplin-esque film, much more so then his Lonesome
Luke films. He really tried to tug at the heart-strings in the first
reel. It was very reminiscent of The Kid, a film that Charlie Chaplin
would release two years later. That's only the begining however.
After the first ten minutes, it was almost like Lloyd had a change of mind.
The second half of the film doesn't feature the girl or her dog until the
last shots, and is a straight slapstick comedy. A pretty funny comedy
at that. I loved the scene where Harold gets the police to chase
him so they can arrest the kidnappers. It was a gag he would reuse
For Heaven's Sake to get the pool hall ruffians into church. It worked
very well in both films.
You can really see the glasses character come to life in this film.
He's honest, hard working, resourceful and very likeable. This is
the character that would make Lloyd famous.
Disc Two:
High and Dizzy (1920): Harold's
second 'thrill picture.' Lloyd plays a doctor who has to cure a patient
(Mildred Davis) of sleepwalking. Before he goes over to see her though,
he drops by a friend's house (Roy Brooks) who has just finished his latest
batch of moonshine. They both sample a bit, then a bit more, and
by the time Harold arrives at the girl's hotel, he's wildly inebriated.
Of course she starts sleep walking, and walks out onto the window ledge,
several stories up. Harold goes right after her and manages to get
her back inside, where she promptly closes the window on him. Harold
sobers up quickly when he realizes how high up he is, but he's still got
to get off the side of the building.
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Harold discovers some shoddy
workmanship in High and Dizzy.
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This was a fun and exciting comedy. There were some good gags
in the first section but the ending of the film where Harold is hanging
off the side of a building was especially entertaining. Lloyd was
remembered for his thrill pictures, and this one will give you a good idea
why.
This also has the first credited appearance of Roy Brooks in a film.
Roy was a good friend of Mildred Davis. After his film career failed
to take off he became Harold's personal secretary and lived on Harold's
estate for forty years until his death. Openly homosexual, Roy also
served as a companion to Mildred while Harold was spending long hours filming.
Never Weaken (1921): One of Harold's
greatest shorts. The object of Harold's affection, Mildred Davis,
is the receptionist at a doctor's office. When Harold hears that
she's been fired because of a lack of patients, he sets out to drum up
some business for the doctor. He manages to fill the doctor's office,
but then overhears Mildred talking to another man and falsely thinks she's
in love with another. Not wanting to live without her, he tries to
kill himself only to end up out on a girder stories above the ground.
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One of his funniest shorts,
Never Weaken has Harold deciding that suicide isn't as easy as it
sounds.
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This was really laugh-filled, a fantastic comedy. This picture
has it all, some great comic gags, spectacular thrills, and a great ending.
Harold has his glasses character down pat by now and really understood
what would and wouldn't work in his comedies. One of the best, and a personal
favorite.
Among Those Present (1921): In Harold
Lloyd's second three-reel film (his first was Now or Never, also included
in this set) he play a bell hop at a fancy hotel. A con-man convinces
Harold to pretends to be Lord Algernon Abbott Aberdeen Abernathy, a newly
arrived English aristocrat. Thinking it's all for a jest, Harold
is introduced at a fancy party given my Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien where he regales
the guests with (made-up) tales of his hunting and riding days in England.
The next day, since he's such an accomplished rider, the pretend Lord is
given Dynamite, the wildest horse in the stables to ride. The result
is a hunt more exciting than any tale he's told.
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The imposter Lord Algernon Abbott
Aberdeen Abernathy tries to shoot some game in Among Those Present.
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This was another great comedy. The film is well constructed, and
it doesn't drag or slow down, as some three-reelers do. The second
half of the film where Harold has lost his pants and has to hide the fact
from everyone he comes across is hilarious. The fox hunt was very
thrilling and comic too, even better that the similar scene in Auntie Mame.
It is easy to see how Harold was able to graduate to full length comedies
soon after this.
Now or Never (1921): The Girl (Mildred
Davis) is a nanny for a precocious little girl Dolly (Anna Mae Bilson).
Mildred wants to go home for her 18th birthday because her boyfriend (Harold
Lloyd) promised years ago that he'd marry her as soon as she came of age.
She wants to see if he still remembers his promise. She hops on a
train, and the little girl wants to come so badly that Mildred takes her
too.
Harold does, and he's saved up money so that he can provide for his
wife. A hobo steals his bankroll though and when he sees the crook
climbing on the supports under a train car, Harold follows him. After
a harrowing fight under a moving train, the money is lost and Harold climbs
aboard where who does he find, but Mildred and Dolly. Unfortunately
Harold doesn't have a ticket, and the child's parents are also on the train.
Mildred leaves the young waif with Harold so she can explain the girl's
presence, and Harold is left to dodge the train conductor and take care
of a child at the same time.
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Harold Lloyd and his leading
lady who would soon marry him in real life, Mildred Davis.
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This was a funny comedy, but not as good as Among Those Present.
The film has a lot of good gags, but parts of it don't work as well as
they could. The fight under the train for example. This wasn't
as suspenseful as it could have been, and the whole scene had the look
of being filmed on one of Roach's turning sets, which it probably was.
Why Harold became so friendly with the crook who stole his money was never
explained either. Even with these faults, there were some funny bits
in the film. Anna Mae was very cute and did a good job for such a
young actress.
The DVD:
Audio:
The audio track consisted of a piano score by Donald Sosin which sounded
very good. Sosin's scores are always fun to listen to and this is
no exception. The music he wrote was scene specific and generally
added to the experience of watching the film. Never Weaken
was especially helped by the audio track. They include a harp section
when Harold thinks he's in heaven, and they also have a small combo playing
jazz a few minutes later when one starts up in the film. Being recently
recorded, there wasn't any audio defects. A very clean sounding track.
Video:
Like the previous three Slapstick Symposium releases, Lobster films
has restored the image on these shorts and has done a very good job.
The video quality was outstanding in general. There are some scratches
and the occasional speck or two, and a very few scenes are a little faded
and washed out, but these are only sections, and not the entire film.
Once again I am impressed with the job that Lobster has done.
Extras:
Neither of these discs had any extras, but with so many great comedies,
you really don't need any.
Final Thoughts:
These are some top-notch silent comedies. This set gives a good
overview of the genesis of the glasses character. Over the course
of these films Lloyd fine tuned the character and created one of the screen's
most memorable comedy figures. Not only that, but these are genuinely
funny. Lloyd's hanging off of girders in Never Weaken and
his being captured by "girl pirates" in Captain Kidd's Kid are just
some of the hilarious moments in this four hour set.
At long last the Harold Lloyd Trust has come to an agreement with New
Line to release a very comprehensive collection of Lloyd films at the end
of 2005. (See this installment of Silent
DVD for more details including release date and a list of films to
be included.) The Harold Lloyd Collection is going to have
the last five of these films that appear in this collection also.
The quality will probably be pretty good, if the print of For Heaven's
Sake that the trust allowed to be shown at this years San Francisco
Silent Film Festival is any indication. Even so, I think this is
a collection worth buying. The music that Donald Sosin wrote and
preformed is also very good and adds to the feeling of the films.
There is also the fact that Kino and Lobster have done another fantastic
job on this set of silent comedies, and that should be rewarded with your
support. But most of all the first five films on this collection
are entertaining, if not perfect, and they show the way the glasses character
evolved in his early films. Altogether this is a very funny set of
films that look very good. Highly Recommended.
Buy: