"Safety Last" Showcases at Historical Museum at 6pm

At 6pm the Historical Museum has a free "Silent Saturday" Screening of Safety Last!

Safety Last is a 1923 film starring Harold Lloyd as "The Boy," a plucky small-town young man  looking to make a fortune in the Big City, (or at least enough to buy a house for himself and his wife-to-be!) 

He travels to Los Angeles,  where skyscrapers and department stores tower above the dangerous traffic jams. It's a lively vision of Jazz-Age American consumer culture in the 1920s.

This is a world brimming with economic optimism, where there's always room for advancement if one has the gumption to reach for it, or the brains to envision the next "great idea!" 

Our protagonist, Harold,  is a clever lad who fits in with all this bustle. Lloyd's comedy scenes are well-staged, relying on visual setups and payoffs while also showing us the potential of silent pantomime acting. Of course, Lloyd is most famous for his films' stunts, which were a huge draw to cinemas in the silent era. In a time before actor unionization, films could get away with staging death-defying spectacles, all for our amusement! As the stakes get higher, (literally!) Lloyd shows us a three-dimensional character who learns to rely not only on his wit, but also his bravery in order to earn that dreamhouse.

The showing is at 80 West Central Street (the Franklin Historical Museum) and is about 75 minutes long. It is part of the "Cinema 80" Series, a project of the Franklin Senior Center and Franklin Historical Museum, curated by Franklin TV Videographer, Chris Leverone.

And because the films are silent, no one will "shush" you for talking...