The Freshman (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1925); The Kid Brother (dir. Ted Wilde, 1927). Free of the occasionally irritating self-consciousness of Charles Chaplin, the silent comedy star Harold Lloyd was closer in spirit and aesthetic to Buster Keaton. But if Buster Keaton was an everyman capable of triumphant heroism, Harold Lloyd's character is even more human; in these two films, Lloyd is portrayed as a sensitive, awkward man whose insecurity and loneliness cause him to seek approval in all the wrong places. When thrust into unfavorable circumstances, he responds admirably, but his courage is always coupled with his very real weaknesses.
The Freshman offers a variation of a familiar silent comedy trope: a mousy, athletically challenged guy goes to college and at first is mercilessly ridiculed though he remains oblivious, but by the end of the semester, he naturally wins the major sporting event, the admiration of his peers, and the affection of a beautiful girl. Though not as iconic as Safety Last, it is immediately accessible because of the tenderness with which Lloyd composes many of the scenes. The Kid Brother is a magnificently sustained film and is probably Lloyd's best, despite the overlong and shockingly violent climactic scene (which, to be fair, does have some of the greatest comedic use of a spider monkey this side of Keaton's The Cameraman).
Both films are available on DVD with extraordinarily good print quality for the era, thanks largely to Lloyd's insistence on personally preserving the original negatives of his films.
The Freshman: A-. The Kid Brother: A.
