Safety Last!

Safety Last! (1923) is a Harold Lloyd silent comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. Lloyd plays a small-town boy who moves to the city chasing success, lands a job as a department store clerk, and writes home to his fiancée pretending he's already made it as a manager.

Mildred Davis plays the girl, and when she shows up unannounced, the clerk's fiction starts to collapse. His only way out is to stage a publicity stunt: his friend, a real-life building climber played by Bill Strother, will scale the department store's twelve-story exterior for the crowds. Except circumstances keep switching them — and Lloyd ends up making the climb himself, floor by floor, battling a clock face, a pigeon, a net, and his own terror.

That climbing sequence became one of the most reproduced images in cinema history, and it holds up completely. Lloyd's screen persona — an eager, ordinary guy who will not quit — is funnier than any exaggerated clown could be. Stream Safety Last! (1923) online on iFILM.