Film Forum

U.S., 1923
Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother
Recorded orchestral score by Carl Davis
Approx. 73 min. DCP. 

Needing dough to marry his sweetheart, lowly sales clerk Harold Lloyd cooks up a million dollar “human fly” publicity stunt. Shot on rooftop sets looming over a real downtown L.A., the death-defying climb up the skyscraper—interrupted by Lloyd’s über-iconic encounter with a huge clock—is, nine decades on, still one of the funniest and most suspenseful sequences in movie history, but only the topper to a succession of priceless gags.

Reviews

“To see it today with an audience alternately roaring with laughter and gasping is one of the greatest experiences of cinema.”
– David Shipman

“Demonstrates Lloyd’s ability to do more than milk a gag, but to top it… Each new floor is like a new stanza in a poem; and the higher and more horrifying it gets, the funnier it gets.”
– James Agee