788 Speedy

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swo17
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788 Speedy

#1 Post by swo17 » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:38 am

Speedy

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Speedy was the last silent feature to star Harold Lloyd—and one of his very best. The slapstick legend reprises his "Glasses Character," this time as a good-natured but scatterbrained New Yorker who can't keep a job. He finally finds his true calling when he becomes determined to help save the city's last horse-drawn trolley, which is operated by his sweetheart's crusty grandfather. From its joyous visit to Coney Island to its incredible Babe Ruth cameo to its hair-raising climactic stunts on the city's streets, Speedy is an out-of-control love letter to New York that will have you grinning from ear to ear.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration
• Musical score by composer Carl Davis from 1992, synchronized and restored under his supervision and presented in uncompressed stereo on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring Bruce Goldstein, director of repertory programming at New York's Film Forum, and Turner Classic Movies program director Scott McGee
In the Footsteps of "Speedy," a new short documentary by Goldstein about the film's New York locations
• Selection of rare archival footage of baseball legend Babe Ruth, who has a cameo in the film, presented by David Filipi, director of film and video at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio
• New visual essay featuring stills of deleted scenes from the film and narrated by Goldstein
• Selection of Lloyd's home movies, narrated by his granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd
Bumping into Broadway, a 1919 Lloyd two-reeler, newly restored and with a 2004 score by Robert Israel
• PLUS: An essay by critic Phillip Lopate

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swo17
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Re: 788 Speedy

#2 Post by swo17 » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:55 am

Bumping into Broadway, a 1919 Lloyd two-reeler, newly restored and with a 2004 score by Robert Israel
One of his best shorts!

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domino harvey
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Re: 788 Speedy

#3 Post by domino harvey » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:59 am

I wrote about this in the Best Director Without Best Pictures thread but this is the film that finally made me see Harold Lloyd as an equal to Keaton and Chaplin. It is one of the greatest "New York" films ever and just delivers one brilliant comic set piece after another

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Drucker
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Re: 788 Speedy

#4 Post by Drucker » Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:02 pm

domino harvey wrote:I wrote about this in the Best Director Without Best Pictures thread but this is the film that finally made me see Harold Lloyd as an equal to Keaton and Chaplin. It is one of the greatest "New York" films ever and just delivers one brilliant comic set piece after another
Was just about to ask where I should start. I wasn't that into Safety Last!, which I found incredibly suspenseful and not that funny. I was also not that into the Kino disc I have so I haven't explored any further. But if this is the one that can finally get me into it, I'll have to pick it up.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 788 Speedy

#5 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:31 pm

Girl Shy and Why Worry (with the wonderful Jobyna Ralston) are two of my favorite longer films, while Ask Father (with Bebe Daniels) is probably my favorite shorter films. I'd say that if you don't like 2 out of these three, LLoyd is probably not your cup of tea.

Speedy is good - but his female lead is not nearly as appealing as Ralston or Daniels,his two most interesting "leading ladies". (Ralston, esp. in Why Worry strikes me as sort of a proto-Diane Keaton, at her best).

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HerrSchreck
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Re: 788 Speedy

#6 Post by HerrSchreck » Thu Oct 08, 2015 3:28 pm

I agree... I love Lloyd but I think the reduced tempo and intensity of the late silents like Speedy leave you with a less killing set of sore oblique muscles from laughter.

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sir_luke
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Re: 788 Speedy

#7 Post by sir_luke » Sat Nov 21, 2015 12:10 am


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Re: 788 Speedy

#8 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Dec 21, 2015 9:55 pm


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colinr0380
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Re: 788 Speedy

#9 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Apr 23, 2016 8:41 pm

I really enjoyed Speedy, and although I have a couple of slight reservations I think I'm with domino on the quality of this film! I especially liked the heightened, almost cartoonish, sound effects added into scenes to highlight some of the comic moments such as the snipped braces on a couple of characters during the final brawl scene making an amusing twanging sound as they fly off! And especially of course the pincer from the crab making a ratchet tightening noise every time it reaches out from our unaware hero's pocket to grab hold of something, or someone!

My reservations around Speedy are really around the way that it feels like a collection of (mostly wonderful!) set pieces rather than a particularly compelling narrative, despite all of the stuff about having to save the father's horse-drawn bus business from unscrupulous businessmen and gangsters! But really more than its story it works best as a tribute to a variety of New York locations and what can be done with them. The majority of the film is pitched at an extremely frantic level, though that feels like it works to capture the hectic, anxious pace of the city, full of people racing to keep up with the pace of modern life!

I think I might have liked a little bit more of a, dare I say Chaplin-style, emphasis on the story over the set pieces, whereas here it feels as if the, always amusing, individual jokes feel like the main focus and then a story is built up afterwards around those jokes. But I think that is probably highlights a difference between the working methods of Chaplin and Lloyd - not better or worse, just differently emphasising their storylines! (It also sometimes felt like some of the jokes in Speedy anticipate Jacques Tati in the sense of making absurd but appropriate leaps of logic in some of the gags: say the moment where the sun coming through a spotty umbrella casts a shadow which causes Harold and his girlfriend Jane to think that he has gotten spots of dirt on his new suit!)

I think I see where Michael Kerpan is coming from with his comment on the female lead here, although I would disagree that it the problem is that the female lead isn't appealing - it is more the way that the film is using her that is the problem. I thought that Jane was a wonderfully charming character, unafraid to have some quite un-ladylike, down to earth fun and quick with a smile. She has a wonderful introduction swiftly booting a couple of tailgating kids hanging on the back of her father's bus (anticipating Harold hitching the taxi to a distressed upper crust lady's car during the final scene!) and hopping on it herself! And Jane is a wonderful presence (even a partner-in-crime!) during the subway train crush sequence and afternoon spent with Harold enjoying the fairground attractions at Coney Island. But the problem comes with the way that Jane sort of drops entirely out of the film after the Coney Island scene as the film focuses more on Harold's taxi driving troubles and the situation of tracking down and returning the father's own bus back to him in a race against time. After being such a strong, individual and wonderful presence in those early scenes, Jane sort of gets sidelined for the rest of the film until getting utilised by the film as the classical 'reward' for the hero at the end, as she runs into the arms of the triumphant Harold in delight! (Though I don't think the film means anything by ignoring Jane for the final half - it just moves its focus elsewhere. In a sense the 'love interest/partner-in-crime' who takes over the second half of the film from Jane is Babe Ruth! Perhaps the only person other than Jane who could catch Harold's eye! But even here while the film suggests early on that baseball might be a hugely important element of the film, even this gets used only for a couple of scenes and then is dropped. Though its all making up part of a larger tapestry, creating a quintessential New York atmosphere I guess!)

Tangentially, something that kept coming to mind during this early section of the film was the 70s BBC show Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em, especially in the way that Frank in that show can never hold down a job, much as Harold in Speedy keeps trying and failing to keep jobs! Though both Speedy and Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em do not make the main character's lack of stable employment a means to condemn our hero, and despite a bit of worry there's never too much anxiety to be found in their predicament as there is always another job around the corner to apply for and inevitably get, before losing it due to hijinks and belligerent employers! (In a more dramatic register that Charles Bukowski novel, and later film, Factotum is perhaps dealing with how this situation might play out in 'real life'!). Though Jane in Speedy is also in the vein of someone like the Gamin in Modern Times and taking a more active role in the action (at least at first) than the more worried Betty Spencer in "Some Mothers"!

One of the very best scenes in Speedy is that beautifully poetic scene in the back of the furniture truck that our couple hitch a ride on back into the city from Coney Island, where they have a scene of moving some of the furniture around in such a way that the back of the truck looks like a cosy front room! Its touching both for the shared moment the couple have and the connection that they are making with each other through their shared dreams, but it also has a slight undercurrent of sadness there too for the suggestion that a brief fantasy of suburban bliss might be all that our couple are ever going to have. Even such a seemingly minor dream seems quite distant. Yet Speedy does feel in a lighter register for all of its 'gritty, on location realism'. There are worries there about future job prospects and livelihoods, but they turn out to only be worries that get solved by ingenuity and a certain amount of street smarts and contacts (such as the furniture truck driver being a friend and being happy to provide a lift back when Harold and Jane seem stranded in Coney Island). I wonder if this upbeat tone in the face of certain darker issues comes about because Speedy was released only a year before the Great Depression struck, so there might still have been a sense of optimism there about life and job prospects that might have seemed hopelessly deluded only a year or two later. (The main social comment in the film is the funny moment of Harold throwing a prospective cab fare's suitcases about which turn out to be full of prohibited alcohol, with the poor jilted fare having to anxiously avoid a passing policeman, gather up his leaking cases and quickly walk off, leaking an incriminating trail of liquor behind him as he goes!). Something like the extremely similarly toned dream sequence in Chaplin's Modern Times from the mid-30s, with the Depression and an upcoming World War separating it from Speedy, plays much broader, almost delusional (the self-milking cow delivering itself to the kitchen door each morning!) in comparison to the character's extremely destitute circumstances in reality.

Even the main plot device of Speedy is revolving around an apparently already extinct form of transport even in 1928 - the horse-drawn taxicab, with the commentary stating that the last of this form of transport had already stopped over a decade before. So there's already a safer sense of risk to the anxiety that this film is dealing with. It is a nostalgic look at a previous way of life that might have been preserved in a more slow moving part of the city more than highlighting any situation more currently relevant or business being threatened in contemporary 1928 terms (I guess the modern equivalent would be doing a movie about the history of Apple that stops in 1998! :wink: Yes, its interesting as a nostalgic or historical piece but isn't it also, perhaps consciously, avoiding dealing with more difficult to grasp 'of the moment' concerns? Though that mid-50s Peter Sellers film The Smallest Show On Earth also came to mind for another form of 'safe nostalgia' for something already gone by suggesting there is a small, untouched by time, old cinema still around in some tucked away corner of the world)

In some ways that plays into the characterisation of Harold himself. A lot of the situations seem to involve Harold ignoring something occurring right under his nose due to his wandering attention. He's slow to wake up to the new realities of the world over and over again, and that is what keeps getting used throughout the film as the set up to all of the misunderstanding comic moments that cause Harold so many problems! (Amusingly after our discussion of the high rating given to the new Criterion disc in the UK there is a shot of Harold flipping the bird at himself at the end of the mirror sequence! Perhaps the BBFC had never noted it before until the commentators pointed it up!) Even in the final search for the father's stolen taxi cab Harold is missing the clues until the dog pushes him in the right direction! The dog itself is constantly used in a role almost as a blunt but amusingly often ignored as an irritation 'guide dog' during the film!

Anyway despite some of my qualms I found the film extremely funny throughout! (I also love the on location-feel to the film, with crowds of presumably real onlookers gathering around to look at the action going on!) I think the scene I laughed hardest at (aside from those brilliant brief shots where characters have enormous close up reactions of utter shock, incensed outrage and/or abject terror!) is the scene where Harold is trying to work out whether he has actually got a taxi fare or not, which is dependent on who wins a brawl! And I especially love that he gives up and drives off only for us to still see the brawl going on in the background further up the street in the next shot! While I have my reservations about the storyline of Speedy being more than just a framework to embellish upon, the sense of atmosphere conjured up by the film and the use of space to emphasise the comedy (not just in the stunts but also the placement of characters for maximum impact) is where this film is at its absolute best!

Its also a great film about being savvy and cheekily pushing your luck to the breaking point...and beyond? I don't think I would have the guts to do some of the irreverent things that Harold does in this film, even if I might secretly dream of doing so every so often! Maybe that's the essence of a successful wish fulfilment film!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 788 Speedy

#10 Post by colinr0380 » Sun May 01, 2016 2:13 pm

In The Footsteps of "Speedy" is great then-and-now location featurette and while Criterion describes it as a short documentary I think that I somehow managed to double the length of it by pausing to read some of the contemporary newspaper headlines shown on screen and to back and forth between film and present day locations a few times! Although even after having spent ten minutes studying those New York subway maps, I still wouldn't feel confident in being able to get around the city that way!

The collection of footage featuring Babe Ruth was fascinating too, though David Filipi provides much needed context to all the disparate public appearances and moments staged for newsreel cameras through the years. I'm probably not the best judge of all of this footage, as my knowledge of baseball is almost zero, though I was pleasantly surprised to realise that I knew most of the other big names here of Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig (of course sadly mostly due to his namesake illness), and that I'd been apparently been pronouncing Knute Rockne's name correctly from the times that I had noticed (due to the eye-catching name!) the title of the film Knute Rockne, All American in film reference guides over the years! That's the benefit of having an interest in film I suppose: it sort of teaches you trivia about lots of different subjects by proxy! Its also one of the great aspects of Criterion extra features, in that it can use the Babe Ruth cameo as an opportunity to put together a feature like this.

In a way it is interesting to compare the Babe Ruth appearances for the cameras with the Harold Lloyd home movies that similarly have to play towards, and put on a bit of a show for, the cameras, rather than acting entirely naturally as might be expected these days when getting immortalised on film is perhaps less of an event. But in both cases there are some very funny, spontaneous moments on display!

And Bumping Into Broadway is amazing in its dodging and weaving antics around groups of people looking to attack Lloyd's character! In some ways it suggests even this early on that the American Football context of The Freshman was an inevitable subject for Lloyd's character to end up involved in! That final ten minutes or so inside the speakeasy-cum-gambling den that solves all our character's money issues whilst throwing a seemingly exponentially expanding number of coppers raiding the joint at our lead character somehow made me think that the big, endless seeming fight sequence in The Matrix Reloaded owed something of a debt to it! And I loved that the cops seem just as seduced by liquor as the people they are arresting, especially in the surprise reveal in the final shot! I also wonder if there is an amusing allusion to the Lumiere disappearing trick films in that moment of our main couple holding up a piece of carpet to conceal their kiss from the audience, only for the boy to focus on the kiss and drop it revealing the couple still there in mid-smooch!

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Re: 788 Speedy

#11 Post by movielocke » Mon Jul 11, 2016 4:17 am

This is easily my favorite Lloyd film, now. I respect and enjoy Safety Last plenty, and I officially definitely watched The Freshmen back when the Big DVD set was released back a decade or so ago, but I have zero memory of the film. This film is really exceptional, the gags are consistently amazing, the editing is pretty wonderful, the views of NYC/Coney Island far outdo the more unimpactful prosceniums of the Crowd or Lonesome. It's the first Lloyd film I've seen to really measure up to the best of Keaton or the best of Chaplin.

It's interesting having seen this for the first time about a month or so after seeing Days of Youth for the first time. I noted when watching the Ozu film that the main character had a look and mannerisms much like Harold Lloyd, and seeing Speedy now, I think the comparison is even more apt. I'm fairly sure I've seen Lloyd posters in silent Ozu films as well. I imagine he was a big hit internationally, as he's a good match for the omnipresent white collar workers the world over.

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Re: 788 Speedy

#12 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jul 11, 2016 10:55 am

Lloyd was also a huge influence on Jackie Chan, and it's not at all hard to discern.

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colinr0380
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Re: 788 Speedy

#13 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jul 11, 2016 12:23 pm

Plus Keaton, Chaplin, even a bit of Errol Flynn! And the Hollywood musical in general.

One of my favourite Jackie Chan films is Miracles, a remake of a film Frank Capra had made twice before!

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