Safety Last! (1923)

Directed by

Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Genre

silent film, romantic comedy film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 13m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.7 of 10 from 588 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young man moves to the city to make a good impression on his sweetheart and his mother back home. He lies about having a big job and then must pull off a daring climb up a skyscraper to keep up the facade.

lightheartedwhimsicalbreezytensethrillingromanticcleverenergetic

What happens

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. The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd's status as a major figure in early motion pictures. It is still popular at revivals, and it is viewed today as one of the great film comedies. The film's title is a play on the common expression "safety first", which describes the adoption of safety measures as a means to avoid accidents, especially in workplaces. Lloyd performed some of the climbing stunts himself, despite having lost a thumb and forefinger four years earlier in a film accident. In 1994, Safety Last! was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is one of many works from 1923 that notably entered the public domain in the United States in 2019, the first time any works had done so in 20 years. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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