Retro Review by Miranda Barnewall
If you haven’t heard of Safety Last!, you have probably seen its iconic image: a bespectacled man, wearing a straw hat, hanging from the hour hand of a clock, stories above the streets of Los Angeles. Martin Scorsese used the famous scene in his homage to silent cinema, Hugo, and Criterion released a stunning 2K transfer of the film a few years back, using that photo as the Blu-Ray/DVD cover.
Safety Last! has a rather simple premise: boy moves to the big city to make it big so he can marry his sweetheart. The boy (Harold Lloyd) often writes to the girl (Mildred Davis) and tells her of his big successes as a higher end employee at De Vore Department store and sends her jewelry to prove his success. However, the reality is just the opposite. Working as a sales clerk in the fabric department, Harold barely makes enough to get by. Rather than treating himself to a hot lunch or paying his rent on time, he uses his paycheck to purchase Mildred pieces of jewelry.
Convinced that Harold has made it, Mildred travels to the city to see Harold and his new life. Her first stop? Visiting Harold at the department store. Harold pretends to be the general manager to impress Mildred, even taking her to “his” office after her insistence on seeing it. Mildred realizes she left her purse in Harold’s “office,” and on his way to the general manager’s office to pick it, Harold hears the (real) general manager tell another employee he would give someone $1,000 (about $15,000 in today’s dollars) for an idea that would draw a crowd to the De Vore Department store. Harold thinks of his roommate, Limpy Bill, a construction worker, who is able to scale buildings as high as sixteen feet. He tells the general manager he has just the idea, and gives him the pitch for a man scaling the department store building. Harold calls Limpy, tells him the plan, and offers to go 50/50 with him on the money. Limpy Bill agrees, and from there begins the sequence the film is known for.
Sure, this film shows the literal heights to which someone will go for love. The things we do and the things we encounter for love can be not only difficult, but also can be comedic. Many of these comedic gems are found in the department store scenes.
Like the majority of us, Harold spends most of his time at the workplace. As a salesclerk in the fabric section, Harold encounters customers and co-workers that audiences today also know quite well. There is the customer that asks for help only moments before your shift ends, only to pass on the item after fifteen minutes of helping her, the stuffy boss that gives your a rough time regardless of the circumstances, and the co-workers you bond with over the craziness of your workplace. Perhaps one of the funniest moments in the film is an extremely busy sales day where numerous women surround Harold demanding help. They tug on his coat sleeves and pull at his shirt, all demanding they be helped immediately. Honestly, I think any person who has ever worked in retail will immediately relate.
The clock scene is enough to merit a viewing of Safety Last! It’s the climax of the movie and still has the impact that it did in 1923. But for me, it was the scenes apart from the clock sequence – the everyday sequences – that drew me in. It’s not just physical safety that is last, but certainty of the future and financial security. There isn’t anything to indicate before the building sequence that Harold will truly make it big in the city and, more importantly, pay his rent. As a young woman who has moved back home, is still paying down her school loans, and figuring out what the next step in her career, I took perhaps what is merely meant to be a simple backdrop of the film to a more complex level. But we do that, right? We bring our life experiences and situations into the films we see and share our thoughts with others.
I was lucky enough to see this film at the Wexner Center for the Arts for free. After a twenty year delay, thanks to the Copyright Term Extension Act (also known as the Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, or sometimes nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act) creative works copyrighted in the year 1923 are now available in the public domain. As the years go on, only more great films, books, and music will be available to the public.
While the archivist side of me could go on about what the end of the copyright extension act means for preservation, it’s not why I went to this screening. It’s actually much more simple. When I saw the event listed on the Wexner’s page, I got two tickets and then texted my younger brother if he wanted to go with me. My brother has admitted to me he likes Buster Keaton, James Cagney, and Clark Gable, but he is not one who would ever sit down to watch a classic movie on his own. When he said yes, I was eager to hear what he thought of the movie after it was over. When the lights dimmed up after the last credit ended, he turned to me and said, “I actually liked it.”
If you’re interested in learning more about copyright, the Copyright Term Extension Act, and creative work entering the public domain, check out this great page from the Center for the Study of Public Domain at Duke University: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/