The Thrill Comedies of Harold Lloyd

About this course:

Like the fictional character he played in more than 200 films, Harold Lloyd was the quintessential American go-getter of the 1920s—a man who combined his many talents with the hard work and determination that propelled his career to stardom. As actor, producer, screenwriter, and director, Lloyd's hilarious and fast-paced comedies pioneered the boy-meets-girl type of story that would later become a staple of romantic comedy. In the process, he founded his own film studio, experimented with 3d photography, color film, microscopy, and built a spectacular fairy-tale mansion where he stored his personal film archive and shot experimental and home movies. In this course, we watch and analyze Lloyd's short movies, his photographic and experimental work, his first talkie Movie Crazy (1932), and five fully-restored silent features. These include Dr. Jack (1922), Girl Shy (1924), The Kid Brother (1927), Speedy (1928), and Safety Last (1923)—the film that inscribed the iconic image of Lloyd dangling from the clock of a building into the collective memory of generations of film goers, where it still stands a century later.