Vintage

Movie Crazy (Harold Lloyd: Motion Picture Sales Corp.) signals the 1949 re-issue of seven Harold Lloyd films, including such belly-laughs as The Freshman, Grandma's Boy, and Safety Last. Movie Crazy (1932) is not one of Lloyd's best, but compared with most recent film comedies, it sparkles like vintage champagne.

At their best, Lloyd's gags have the simplicity and spontaneity of growing grass. They emerge almost imperceptibly from next to nothing and a moment later become a blooming hayfield of blundering frustrations. At their wildest they have the towering improbability of Jack's beanstalk. His props are the natural pitfalls of daily life. His situations spring from the normal embarrassments of a small-town boy, abnormally innocent and awkward, but gifted with a brash, penultimate courage which always brings him out on top.

Most of the masters of silent comedy --Chaplin, Langdon and Keaton--were clowns in the Continental tradition. Lloyd, a collateral descendant of Horatio Alger heroes, is the clown of the U.S. middle class. His pictures are warmhearted parodies of old-fashioned American manners & morals.

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