A Film Canon

It makes sense that Harold Lloyd's most iconic film should focus on college life, partly because this allows him to replace his characteristic rural-urban-rural trajectory with a more economical rural-educational one, in which a fundamentally alien, capitalist cityscape is reified in the form of cultural capital, here signified by the spatially ambiguous university topography. It also promises an apotheosis of Lloyd's boyish naivete, although this is somewhat qualified by the change in narrative structure. Whereas urbanity tends to catalyse Lloyd's pervasively rural love interests, via a provision of energy or insight, here catalyst and love interest co-exist in the same semi-urban topos, with the result that the final stunt sequence is not so much an attempt to impress a loved one as to ingratiate himself into an unworthy crowd. This cheapens and flattens his relatively idiosyncratic brand of physical comedy, producing the same mild sense of exploitation that would have occurred had he climbed Safety Last!'s department store facade for the sake of the street audience. That said, there are some moments of ingenuity, including his little greeting jig, as well as an extended gag in which his tuxedo gradually comes apart at the college dance.