Michael's Movie Grade:A+
Review: Incredible silent romantic comedy, that shows perfectly why Harold Lloyd deserves his placing among such greats as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
This film was the first movie Harold Lloyd produced himself after leaving the Hal Roach Studios. Despite this Harold still had most of the same crew that had worked with him on the Hal Roach films including directors Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, writers Ted Wilde and Tim Whelan, and cinematographer Walter Lundin. This is a great start that stands up against his best films for Hal Roach.
This film is naturally very funny. Scenes like Harold and Mary (played by Jobyna Ralston) trying to hide a dog on board a train, Harold's fantastic (and ridiculous) romantic fantasies, and the long chase at the end are about as funny as anything Harold has ever done. Thomas J. Gray's intertitles are also as funny as they can be.
Harold Lloyd like to divide his movies between what he called gag pictures and character pictures. In gag pictures the story existed for no other reason than to propel the gags, but in character pictures along with the comedy there was some drama as well (though they were still mainly comedies). This was a character picture. The drama in this film is fantastic. You truly care about Harold. You feel sorry for him and hope things turn out well in the end. On top of this the romance between him and Mary is utterly believable. The actor and actress have perfect chemistry and the romance is very well written. You find even while you are laughing, you are still wanting them to get together. One scene where things look grim is very heartbreaking.
I was fortunate enough to see this in a theater with live musical accompaniment (by a very talented organist named Bill Field). If you ever get a chance to see this film this way do it. As much as I loved the many times I had seen this on DVD and TCM, this was a whole different experience and something that managed somehow to be much better, than what was already great.
-Michael J. Ruhland
Thank for a well thought out review. I agree! This is a gem of Harold's! :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed.
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