Greatest Movie Scenes #82 - SAFETY LAST!

By Matt Holmes / June 24, 2011

After Charles Chaplin last week, we bring you another example of a glorious scene without dialogue and possibly one of the ten most memorable images of 20th Century Cinema. SAFETY LAST!, the 1923 silent movie still holds up today because of it's incredible visceral imagery and such precise storytelling and cinematic melodrama. American silent film star Harold Lloyd, more popular at the box office than Chaplin or Keaton in his day, pulls off this miraculous stunt of climbing a 12 story skyscraper to prove the love to his girl but encounters various humorous obstacles at each floor which puts him in grave danger. That's not just him the character, but him as an actor too. And to think, Lloyd did this ten years after he lost the thumb and right index finger on his right hand after an accident on set forcing him to wear a prosthetic glove for this scene. His biggest obstacle is trying to regain his balance with the aid of a large clock!

Of course, it's to the credit to co-directors Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, Lloyd himself and everyone else that worked on the movie that it works as well as it does because there's little doubt that a lot of this was camera trickery and at times, it's extremely possible a stunt double was used. And credit to should certainly go to the score, whose memorable beat changes create a tension at each obstacle.

(Try playing the scene on silent, it doesn't work quite as well).

However for much of the scene, it is clearly Lloyd. And clearly Lloyd hanging off that clock with very little other than his incredible bravery and balance keeping him a float. Crazy yes... but did it cement the image for eternity? You betcha!

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