Along with THE FRESHMAN, SAFETY LAST is one of Harold Lloyd’s best-known films. In hardly any other slapstick comedy has Lloyd succeeded better in giving the striving young man with glasses a sharper profile. In a fascinating way, Harold Lloyd combines emotional expressiveness with physical dexterity and boldness. Moreover, SAFETY LAST holds one of the most iconic images in silent film history: Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock 12 stories above the streets of Los Angeles..
In his new composition, Carl Davis drew inspiration from the popular music of the 1920s and based his orchestration on the line-up of the legendary Paul Whiteman Band.
In order to finally become rich and marry “the girl”, “the boy” moves to the big city. But luck is not on the street there either, and so he ends up as a salesman behind a shop counter. When his fiancée arrives to visit the “successful businessman”, Harold has to risk his neck to get the money at the last minute. He devises a big advertising campaign for the company he works for: climbing a skyscraper for $1000. Through a chain of unfortunate circumstances, it is finally he who is suspended at a dizzying height above the abyss. At the hands of a giant clock, he fights for all-embracing success (money, life and the girl) or the fatal crash.
