Safety Last! & Undercranking: The Magic Behind the Slapstick

Presented by Toronto Silent Film Festival

April 11 - April 11, 2015 1:00pm
Fee:  $20 ($15 senior/student)

Website: www.torontosilentfilmfestival.com

From New York City, noted film historian, silent film composer and accompanist Ben Model, will lead the audience on a journey in:
Undercranking: The Magic Behind the Slapstick
“Silent films aren't just silent…they're a little faster, and they're SUPPOSED to be that way. In this hour long original, fascinating and revealing lecture/presentation, silent film historian Ben Model explains how and why comedians like Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and others utilized the speed-up of silent film through “undercranking” to create gags and character business that could only exist in that universe.” –Ben Model
Many comedians creatively used the early film technique of hand-cranking while filming and projecting to manipulate the frames per second (fps) to speed action up or slow it down. By controlling time they would create illusions of certain movements through “sleight of eye”; a technique that was lost in the sound era when a fixed rate film speed of 24fps was imposed.
followed at 2:45pm with
Safety Last! 1923
Directors: Fred C Newmeyer & Sam Taylor
Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young
70 min
No one epitomized the get up and go attitude of the Roaring Twenties more than Harold Lloyd. Looking like the boy next door, his series of highly inventive and successful comedies often fused thrills with laughter. Safety Last! contains the image of what he has become best known for: the man hanging from a clock high above a busy street.
Harold plays a small town boy who goes to the big city in order to make good so he can marry his sweetheart. He finds the city hard to crack and ends up embellishing his success in his letters back home. He dreams up a publicity stunt to draw crowds to the store he works for and win some big money. Things start to rapidly unravel when he is forced to perform the stunt of climbing up the side of a building. Every floor up presents new challenges to overcome; every floor up escalating the gasp inducing thrills for audiences until finally he arrives at the big clock. Will Harold complete his mission and win the love of his girl or has he run out of time!
Print courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Foundation
Guest Accompanist: Ben Model