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Everyone knows the basic image of Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock several stories up in Safety Last, but he’s a rarely watched performer. Despite being dubbed the “third genius” of the silent clowns, he frequently disappears behind the towering giants of Keaton and Chaplin. I say all of this to admit that Lloyd was a blind spot for me until very recently, and still I’ve only seen The Freshman.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why Lloyd has fallen into the crevices, but there’s a slow burning resurgence and appreciation of his work. Thank Criterion in part for their three stellar home video releases, but there’s something deeper at play here. Lloyd’s everyman character, known only as the “Glasses Character,” was a blank projection for the anxieties, hopes, dreams, and fears of the roaring 20s. There’s something refreshing about watching his character barrel through and try to overcome, and there’s something poignant about his blank canvas absorbing the ordinariness of the audience.
Perhaps Lloyd has fallen behind Keaton and Chaplin because his character is not as immediately recognizable as theirs. Chaplin’s mustache, cane, and ill-fitting clothes are immediately recognizable cinematic totems, and Keaton’s large, expressive eyes and immobile facial experiences are a caricature that is consistent across his films. Lloyd is a true everyman, and his comedy is very different from the two of them. Lloyd provides escapism to his audience, but his gags are not the mile-a-minute mixture of pratfalls, sentimentality, and visual wonderment that is found in films like The General or The Gold Rush.
Lloyd was still a great genius, but his comedy was less rapid-fire punchlines then it was a humorous novelistic approach. His gags build slowly, and the entirety of the frame begins to vibrate with his tenderness and neurosis. His everyman, here named Harold Lamb, adopts a fake persona in an effort to charm his fellow classmates in his first year at college. His introductory speech to his fellow students is a study in social awkwardness dialing it up in slow motion until you’re empathetically cringing for him.
Moments like this, where Lloyd’s eager to please and be liked freshman rubs up against cruelty, are common throughout. The Freshman has two sequences that work wonderfully as comedy pieces and short films in their own right. The Fall Frolic is a heady party where the reverie on the screen can be felt as a viewer. Lloyd’s tuxedo is in a constant state of decay and he contorts his body into bizarre positions to mask the quick tailoring needed to repair it. He eventually learns that the entire student body views him as the butt of their jokes, and Lloyd’s cracked face in the storm of adversity is quite humbling and emotive.
The other great scene is the climatic football, because of course it is. The Freshman isn’t the first college-centric movie, nor is it the first to be about football, but it is the first to successful merge these ideas and actions into one film. Lloyd’s blank canvas underdog gets his chance to shine in the Big Game, and manages to come up a winner by being himself and playing slightly dirty. There’s a cavalcade of great gags here, but my favorite has to be the sight of him untying a football to turn it into a yo-yo like object. Instead of basking his character in the love felt for winning the game, but in a love letter and sighing while the shower pours down on him. It is a quiet moment of solace and a light chuckle to end the film on, essentially quieting his anxieties about socializing and the world of college.
Starting afresh is always an anxious proposition, but The Freshman puts it through the proverbial wringer. As a first brush with Harold Lloyd, this is a wonderful introduction to his more low-key personality and comedic genius. He truly was the “third genius,” and if the rest of his work is as good as The Freshman then his reappraisal is long overdue. His bespectacled character is a proxy for all of us, and his eternal optimism and pluck is aspirational.
