Harold Lloyd's online movie review.

The following two articles are film reviews published by netizens for reference only. Hitchcock once said that the problem with silent movies is that the actors in the picture open their mouths but make no sound. The implication is that apart from this lack of technology, he can't see how many essential breakthroughs the audio era can bring to movies. Let's put aside the limitations of history. If we look back carefully at the comedy classics in the silent film era, we will really find that what the master said is not unreasonable. Sound does limit the imagination of the younger generation of film practitioners to some extent. I felt this way when I watched Keaton crazily some time ago, and I still felt this way when I watched this movie again recently.

"The Last Safety" adopted my favorite comedy technique of "using the specific position of the lens to create similarity" from the beginning. First of all, on the screen are young men and women who say goodbye sadly across the fence, while in the foreground is a noose. These figures, together with a suspected priest, make it hard not to immediately think of "execution". Surprisingly, the camera turned to the other side of the prison, and everyone saw me off at the train station. That lasso is just a tool to transmit signals between the station attendant and the train driver. The only flaw in this perfect passage may be, did the train station really have this kind of hanging rope tool at that time? Haha, in any case, it is almost impossible to see such a fantastic idea built entirely on the lens position in modern comedy movies.

Harold lloyd, the hero, went to the city by train to look for a job. He plans to bring his girlfriend to town to get married after his career is successful. But contrary to expectations, Lloyd did not do well. Driven by self-esteem, he didn't want his lover to know his embarrassing situation, so he secretly pawned his roommate's jukebox and bought a jewelry without a chain for his girlfriend to give. ...

The next film actually shows how Lloyd overcame one difficulty after another by relying on his wit in the process of rounding this love lie. First of all, they have to deal with the landlord who urges rent above. In order to escape the coup, these two men should not only have good physique, but also have strong hanger hooks. If you are late for work, you should avoid the visiting manager. He installed hangers and models and made every effort to learn from the locals. Moreover, the jewelry was sent, and the excuse for not having a chain was found. But after all, I have to send it back. Lloyd, who was paid, found himself faced with a dilemma, either spending all his money to buy the chain of10.50 dollars, or trying to satisfy his hunger with a half-price lunch of 0.50 dollars. Finally, I will grind my teeth and stomp my feet and starve for love all my life! The shot of this plot is very clever. Every time Lloyd hesitated and struggled to hand out a coin, his imaginary lunch saw disappeared. Is this one of the earliest psychological descriptions in movies? Ha ha.

Harold lloyd's films are few, so it is difficult to compare with Chaplin and Keaton, two other comedians of his time. But only from this so-called classic work, Lloyd is more like an ordinary person. His characters lack the iconic features like Chaplin's moustache tramp and Keaton's "eternal stone face (not yellow)". This may be one of the reasons why it is rarely juxtaposed with the above two in later generations. However, the comedy plot related to the characters in this film seems to be more dramatic. I like the following plot very much.

His girlfriend was ecstatic when she received his letter. But my wily mother reminded me that this kind of single man with more money is very dangerous in the city (of course, she means women). The daughter immediately understood and decided to go to town to surprise him. At this time, the camera inserted subtitles, "Mom's intuition is so right, Lloyd is in danger." What's the danger? As soon as the camera turned, Lloyd, who was overwhelmed by the picture, retreated and the picture unfolded. Wow, what a large group of women surrounded him. But it is not the rich girl who blocks the bachelor, but the aunt who is rushing to buy cloth ... In my impression, there are really few cases in which this off-screen commentary has a comedy effect.

After his girlfriend arrived, it became more difficult for Lloyd to hide his identity: he had to pretend to be a store manager to get away with it. During this period, a series of coincidences and misunderstandings are naturally used in comedy. Generally speaking, this plot is not as good as the last paragraph.

Deception can only be temporary, and difficulties always need to be broken through. The way is: Lloyd asked his best friend to climb the stairs to advertise in the store, and then got a reward of $65,438+0,000 to marry his girlfriend. But many things happened, and friends were targeted by the teased police. So Harold had to do it himself!

Did he do it himself or didn't he? On this point, Albert once used a considerable space to discuss it in his film reviews. But there seems to be no clear conclusion. From the lens analysis, it seems that Lloyd did it himself, but from the mouth of a well-informed person after his death, body double was used. But anyway, the climax at the end didn't touch me too much. On the one hand, too many close-ups cannot make people understand that Harold is performing desperate stunts. On the other hand, the dangerous design of each floor is somewhat deliberate. The only thing that makes people sing is the scene where he grabs the watch hand. It is said that Jackie Chan is China's buster keaton, but the most classic "Plan A" was inspired by harold lloyd, another comedian in the silent film era. The film was born in 1928, and the sound film has already appeared, and the silent film has entered the final period, which is also Lloyd's last silent feature film (buster keaton shot a year longer than him, while Chaplin was still making silent films until 1936, but it is not a pure silent film, with sound effects and a small amount of dialogue). Obviously, it is a very imperfect ending, and the level of the whole movie is higher than his peak.

The first is the breakdown of the plot. Lloyd's feature films, such as "The Last Safety" and "The Sailor", are divided into several relatively independent paragraphs to show jokes in different environments because of the silent film form, but each part is organically integrated into a whole because of the plot, which is a complete story. Without any paragraph, logic will be affected. But in this movie, the plot is divided into several parts, the main line is to protect the last carriage in the city, and the secondary line is the protagonist's love and career setbacks. These parts are almost completely unrelated to each other, just like interlacing several of his short films. No matter the laughter on the playground or the embarrassment of being a taxi driver, they can be deleted without affecting the plot of the movie-and their only purpose seems to be to make the movie into a long story for box office reasons.

Then there is the scarcity of jokes. Apart from the romantic love he has always created, the biggest attraction of watching Lloyd's movies is jokes, and jokes that make people laugh largely come from uniqueness and initiative. However, the number of jokes in this film is rare, and secondly, it completely copies its early works. For example, crab jokes in amusement parks are almost completely isolated from their own "hot water", and the plot of being beaten up because of misunderstanding or stealing other people's clothes and accessories has been shown in detail in "New Life". The taxi accident and car chase at the end are not only creative, but also the excitement and incredible coincidence accidents at the scene are greatly reduced.

Besides, Lloyd himself is not so hard. His biggest action is to jump back and forth in the carriage, which is completely impossible. At the peak, he photographed an oolong ghost horse's agile avoidance when fleeing from a group of policemen, and the street racing of a full set of vehicles, all of which were wonderful pictures with eyes straight. In this movie, no action can be compared with those classics.

Personally, I define the watershed of urban theme of American funny silent films as 1925. There were many excellent works before this, and there is almost nothing to say after this. Lloyd's breathless and joke-intensive works are all before 1925. The Last Safety, Tell the Truth and Sailor, as well as several 30-minute short films with the theme of being haunted, caring for children, cheating and escaping from the police, are always full of surprises, always making people exclaim "Thanks to his thinking" and "Thanks to his acting skills". However, at the watershed of 1925, the level of "Freshman" (this film actually beat Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" at the box office, and of course "The Gold Rush" was not a very good work) immediately declined. Apart from dancing, it still makes people feel happy, and the rest is just a mediocre inspirational story, and even the ending is not as romantic as usual. After that, "Little Brother" was even more dead, and the imaginative chase scene seemed to return to the peak, but the following films immediately lowered their hopes to the bottom, which also marked the end of Lloyd's silent film career.

In contrast, buster keaton's list of works can better illustrate this problem. Think about the works before Keaton 1925. The Voyager, Sherlock Holmes II, Seven Opportunities, and The Way to Treat Guests are undoubtedly classic works that pay equal attention to comedy and drama, while short films such as Police, Scarecrow, Haunted House, Code Word, etc., although the plot, even relatively dull works like Three Times have their own characteristics. After 1925, Keaton also had many works, but only General and Captain II became classics, and these two films were creatively used because Keaton himself had a lot of experience in the design of institutional props. The other works, Butler War, University, Photographer and Troubled Marriage, failed to see Keaton's symbolic agility and agility. The training and actual combat process of Butler vs. Boxing was disappointing. The university only showed an all-around movement at the end, and the rest were narratives. The stage performance of the problem marriage is really old-fashioned. The second half is Keaton's boat play, which means a lot of self-plagiarism. As for the photographer, which is regarded as a masterpiece by many people, I can only admit that the story is really good, and it can even be made into a sound movie, but I

I think there are three reasons for the decline of comedy level in the contemporary background in the late silent film era (only discuss this type, because these problems do not exist in non-comedy fairy tales and ancient costumes often played by stars such as Fan Punk):

First, the creation cost of comedy scenes is too high, while the form of silent films, the action limits that actors can achieve and various institutional coincidences caused by large and small props are limited, thus forming a pair of contradictions. On the one hand, the directors racked their brains and couldn't think of any new tricks to make the audience shine. On the other hand, there are too many things that silent film equipment and silent film actors can't express. In this way, they can only be reduced to the lack of laughter in almost pure narrative, or constantly copy the early bridge. In fact, the contribution of silent film itself to action performance has reached a high achievement. Without the help of wire stunts and computer processing, the effect of silent film itself may not be as exciting as that of silent movie stars. At that time, there were unparalleled imaginations and actors who dared to fight and fight, but they all stopped because of the times.

Second, with the growth of actors' age, it is not suitable to co-perform many hilarious action scenes. Because of the limitation of technology, silent films basically rely on the intensity of the picture to form the effect. Although narrative is sometimes unexpected, it is basically an embellishment of action. Therefore, silent film stars should have excellent skills of jumping, crawling, hitting people and being beaten. Even Chaplin, who later reached a new artistic peak with tearful laughter and satirical social and political situation, started his career with agile skills in his early years. When such a star reaches his thirties, his physical strength drops and he is aching all over. Naturally, he can't continue to contribute hilarious violence on the screen, and the entertainment of the film naturally decreases. In addition, most of these urban comedies are stories of contemporary princes and princesses, with romantic love scenes as the main plot. When the "prince" is old and no longer suitable for this kind of role, it also affects the creation of the script. When the traditional routine is going to be abandoned, many paragraphs that can be naturally mixed in the traditional routine are also abandoned.

Thirdly, the impact of sound films caused the depression of silent films. As we all know, in the early 1920s and 1930s, although the recording effect was primitive, and the entertainment of the script declined to a certain extent due to the lack of experience in scriptwriting, the audience would rather put up with it and watch the actors speak on the screen (incidentally, in those early talking movies, except for the actors, there was really no sound), which shows that this is the trend of historical progress and the will of the people is unstoppable. After the birth of 1927, the audience was deeply fascinated by this new film form. At this time, as a silent film creator representing backward technology, how can he continue to create wonderful scripts with a peaceful mind? If I were you, I'd have to write some decent scripts before the silent movies disappeared and the stars were out of breath.