Harold Lloyd's iconic scene in the silent film "Safety Last" (1923). One of the most famous images from the silent film era with Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock from the outside of a skyscraper.
When the rope ends and he grabs the building again is absolutely hair raising. The overhang moments and teetering on the top ledge are truly terrifying, incredible work, balls of steel
When you compare this to what they do now with quick camera shots, green screens, computer special effects, this wins hands down in my opinion. Because it’s truly realistic and suspenseful. In our constant need for bigger and splashier special effects we have lost something elemental and replaced it with something shallow
Because there’s no need to do this kind of stuff anymore where someone could get seriously hurt. Plus too much money in movies now to ever let your star try this stuff.
@@letsssgooo4618 That was true back then, too. There are tricks used here also -- but they look real, which is why it works. As opposed to that phony CGI crap. And the constant cutting and tight closeups take away from the effect. (Which is why Fred Astaire insisted that his dance scenes be shot in full body and without cutting. It's much more impressive that way -- you're really seeing something happening, instead of your mind imagining it via the editing.)
I saw this film at the Gateway Theatre in Chicago when it was released to the public for the first time in 80 years - it had been in the vault the entire time. Talk about a full house and everyone in stitches and gasps. It was amazing. Nothing I've seen has ever come close to that experience and I doubt anything ever will.
This guy was awesome! he was was missing two or three fingers on his right hand and used a prosthetic type of glove to hide it, and he was still able to do his own climbing stunts.
True trivia: the star of this film, Harold Lloyd, was one of the great geniuses of silent film, up there with Chaplin and Keaton. Like them, he did his own stunts. A few years before this movie, a prop bomb accidentally went off in his hand, blowing off a couple of fingers on one hand. He had a prosthetic glove made that made his damaged hand look normal. He was doing the risky stunts you see here while wearing it, meaning he was doing this stuff with only one fully functioning hand. Amazing.
Lloyd did some of the safer ones but since his death, people who did stunts for him - mainly Harvey Parry - and were sworn to secrecy during his lifetime have revealed the truth. The claim that stars like Lloyd did their own stunts was a good selling point but the studios of course knew better than to risk the health and safety of their big moneymakers. Lloyd had already lost part of his hand in an explosive stunt so he was well-warned. Even Buster Keaton - probably the greatest at athletic stunts - didn't do all his own stunts. The famous pole-vault, for instance, was done by Olympian Lee Barnes.
It just came back to me that i used to watch Harold Lloyd with my grandad. I showed this scene to my 5 year old daughter who laughed and shirked in all the right places - timeless.
Including the laws of beating your wife to death over superficial, insignificant things? Or the rampant racism? O_O Not to mention that even having a low level learning disabilities (dyslexia or dyscalculia) or being deaf or blind will get you locked up in an asylum. The past wasn't all rosy, especially those with disabilities and/or disorders. Sorry. You can have it. I want to move forward into the future and hopefully end up like Star Trek The Next Generation.... no monetary or market systems, all our needs are given and meant... racism would transfer towards other species rather with each other. We humans must evolve beyond what we have now.
You can make it much more safer and shittier with CG. All is CG now, so you can spare money and don't need professionnal stuntmens anymore. So the billions you make are only for the production team. YEAH !
@tomflynn1974 on this film only on the long camera shots of a person climbing the building. It's all HL on the close up work on the prop wall 20 feet high mounted on a platform near the roof edge. No safety barriers around the platform. Climbing with only one good hand. That he did it is still mind-blowing. On his next thrill picture 'Feet First" stunt men were used more often.
I was forced to believe Charlie was the king all my life!!i never knew this guy existed all my life!!this is the greatest king in movie history!!period!!
It’s probably the most famous image of the silent era. A pasty-faced, bespectacled young man dangling from the minute hand of an enormous clock twelve stories above a city street. For years, it was thought that comedian Harold Lloyd made the dizzying ascent by himself. But after Lloyd’s death in 1970, stuntman Harvey Parry revealed that he had handled most of the really treacherous parts - the flips and near-falls. As for the clock scene, a set replicating the building’s top two floors was constructed on the roof of the actual building, with mattresses laid down in case Lloyd fell the twenty feet or so. Cameras were cleverly angled to show the street below. Though Lloyd certainly had help, his classic scene continues to make time stand still, figuratively and literally, for generations of movie fans.
No,No actually bill strother, who also played harold's pal,billed as limpy bill did most of the climbing here, (the long shots especially).harvey doubled mostly for harold seven years later in the pale sound remake. maybe he claimed he also climbed for hal in this classic film comedy of his is because there's any production stills that doesn't exist at all from this great silent film comedy.
Harvey climbed and doubled primarily for hal in the fun but inferior kind of, sound remake,feet first in 1930. he most likely had claimed to had climbed for hal in the great safety last! is because no production stills from this classic silent doesn't exist anymore.
Not to diminish his performance in this classic film, but he's never more than a few feet off a flat roof. The side of the building he is supposedly climbing is a set, mounted on the flat roof of a building, just out of view. When he climbs up a floor, filming actually shifts to another, slighty taller building also with a flat roof, and they move the wall set to the top of that. You can see this when the buildings and tram lines in the background change between floors. At 1:04, for example, we can see crossing tramlines and an advert for Stagg. At 1:50, when he is below the famous clock, these have disappeared. At 8:23, they have changed again.
I remember watching these as a child, the magic and excitement is still amazing as an ; adult ; hillerious right up till the final scene. more more more!!!
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More like 15 to 20. I have the Lloyd biography book which includes pics of how this was done. A prop wall on a platform built on a tall building rooftop. To get the proper camera angle the platform was near the rooftop edge with no safety barriers around it. Sure 15 feet below Harold were bed mattresses but if he fell sideways and not flat he bounces off the mattress and over the roof edge to his death.
Adding to the danger is the fact that Harold Lloyd had lost the thumb and index finger of his right hand while posing for a publicity picture in August of 1919 with what he had been told was a perfectly safe prop.
even after being so old this scene kept me on the egde of the seat, my fingers crossed throughout....this is the true definition of thrill. Why don't they make more of such scene.....
@@TonyDAnnunzio More like a couple meters off the ground. cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/med-16-9/s3/lead/2017/01/safety-last-sfx-behind-the-scenes.jpg And still it wasn't easy to do all the stuff he did in the movie, even with a full hand, let alone with two missing fingers.
this piece of wall you see stands on a flat rooftop, and the camera stands on a wooden platform that films the street, and the prop wall with the actor hanging on, with a soft mattress underneath him
Would make total sense! Ingenious indeed. Keaton was a GM stuntman, and would seem, illusionist. Better then most A list action actors today. The Chase is an example. But he was not crazy. They could not hide harnesses with fx in 1923? Build around it. Thanks for the debunk!
There is an even sweeter element to the ending. Lloyd and Mildred Davis got married not long after this movie. They would stay married until Mildred's death in 1969. So it almost feels like a real life happy ending. (Incidentally, this was one area where he had his great rivals, Chaplin, and Keaton beat. Keaton's first marriage cost him his entire fortune, his home, and his kids, and well, we all know the history of Chaplin's love life, three tries before he got it right.)
Firstly they are not staged. He actually did climb the building and what is more remarkable is he had lost his thumb and the first two fingers of a hand in an explosion What you see is his prosthetic thumb and fingers. One amazing guy
Sorry, it was staged. The far away shots were with a stuntman. The closeup shots were lloyd hanging from a fake clock on a building facade which was built on the roof of a completely different building across the street, at an angle to make it look real.
My favorite silent film was The Kid with Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan from 1921 but I really love the old street scenes of NYC in Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton films. Now those two guys had some balls. It's really a miracle they were not killed doing some of their stunts while making movies back then. I sure would love to go back in time to that era. And yes, my palms sweat profusely every time I watch this clip.
I love when the citizens look on when harold and buster are out on the streets doing their scenes. giving indication that these people are not extras just ordinary everyday people just watching their favorite stars for interest and sheer admiration.
The actors and actresses 90+ years ago actually did their own stunts and would actually do these things that modern actors and actresses would be whining, complaining and shitting in their pants.
Part of the secret was, Lloyd and his crew built fake sections of building atop real buildings. There were safety nets and planks out of camera range. But as you can clearly see, he would have fallen quite a ways if he had in fact fallen off.
I remember the first time I saw this film. I was lucky enough to see it in the cinema a number of years back, and this is one of the few times in my life I've been sitting in a theatre, watching a film, and my hands literally start to sweat because it's so intense. Seeing this in a cinema was a whole other experience!
