SAFETY LAST!

Showings

Castro Theatre Sun, Jul 21, 2013 8:30 PM
Accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Description

USA, 1923, Directors Sam Taylor, Fred Newmeyer

Cast
Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young, Westcott B. Clarke

$20 General / $18 Member

A bespectacled man hanging off the hands of a collapsing clock on the side of a skyscraper high above teeming city streets is one of the most indelible images of cinema. The thrilling climax of Safety Last! is made all the more exciting because Harold Lloyd, one of the masters of silent-era comedy, didn’t need CGI to make it happen. But why he is up there in the first place? A girl, of course! Safety Last! takes a familiar story of a boy meets girl and turns it into high-art comedy. Layered with expert gags, the 1923 film inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Agee to write of the climb: “Each new floor is like a stanza in a poem.” (TRT: 70 mins.)