Slapstick Live: Safety Last [OmU], USA 1923, R: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor mit Harold Lloyd, 73 Min,

30.4 am Piano Meg Morley,
04.5 am am Klavier Daan van den Hurk

Harold verlässt seinen Heimatort, um in der Großstadt Karriere zu machen. Die beginnt für ihn erstmal als kleiner Warenhausverkäufer.

Dann erfährt Harold zufällig von einem Ideenwettbewerb, um dem Kaufhaus mehr Publicity zu verschaffen. Harold schlägt seinem Kumpel Bill, einem erfahrenen Fassadenkletterer, die Besteigung des Wolkenkratzers vor. Weil Bill am entscheidenden Tag Ärger mit einem Polizisten bekommt, muss Harold alleine ran. Lloyds Film entstand unter weitgehend realen Bedingungen an Außenschauplätzen.

Die Szene des am Zeiger der Außenuhr zappelnden Harold gehört zu den berühmtesten der Filmgeschichte.

ENGL.

"The film, “Safety Last!,” released in April 1923, was in many ways Lloyd’s zenith as a major Hollywood star. He is said to have come up with the idea of dangling from the side of a building after seeing a man scale one in Los Angeles.

But Lloyd wanted the stunt to be even more outrageous on film. Enter the clock.

“Harold was such a realist, and every scenario in his movies had to be a real event or a real situation for a person to be in,” his granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, 71, said during a recent video interview from her Los Angeles home. “The clock was another tool on the side of the building to perpetuate the stunt. He thought, ‘I can really play off of that.’”

And play he did. Lloyd’s character, The Boy, thinks up the idea of scaling a department store to win $1,000 offered by its manager to increase business — and hopes the stunt also will help him win The Girl. He begins his ascent, battling a flock of pigeons, a swinging window and a friend named Limpy inside the building who becomes as much of a danger as a helper.

As The Boy pauses on a window ledge, a buffoonish moment with Limpy causes him to fall back, saved only by grabbing the clock’s hands, which were conveniently positioned at 2:45 (when the longer minute hand is parallel to the ground)." NYtimes

Safety Last! is a 1923 American silent romantic-comedy film starring Harold Lloyd.

It includes one of the most famous images from the silent-film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic.

Highly successful at that time, it is one of the great film comedies.