This is comedy crafted from the material of nightmares, and Harold Lloyd (or his stunt double) displays a light-footedness and dexterity that is frankly quite astonishing. When you consider that Lloyd lost a thumb and finger when a supposedly dud prop bomb exploded in his hand just a year before this film was made it just adds to the courage he displays as he wobbles around on the narrow girders of a partially-constructed skyscraper hundreds of feet in the air. For my money, his stunts here far outshine those from Safety Last, the feature Lloyd made a couple of years later, in which he hangs from a clock on the side of a building.
The storyline isn't much to speak of, and the film is really two movies combined as the first half has little bearing on the second. Harold mistakenly believes his beloved (the future Mrs Lloyd, looking a little like Drew Barrymore in some shots) has fallen for another man and unsuccessfully tries to commit extravagant suicide with a gun and a length of string just as a stray girder from the construction project outside his office lifts the chair on which he is sat out of his office and into mid-air. The scenes in which Lloyd is perched on the chair are teeth-grindingly difficult to watch at times, and your laughter is really an hysterical release of tension rather than amusement at what is taking place on screen. I'd love to have seen this in a cinema back in 1921 – the audience reactions must have been something to see, and would have made the viewing experience all the more enjoyable.
The storyline isn't much to speak of, and the film is really two movies combined as the first half has little bearing on the second. Harold mistakenly believes his beloved (the future Mrs Lloyd, looking a little like Drew Barrymore in some shots) has fallen for another man and unsuccessfully tries to commit extravagant suicide with a gun and a length of string just as a stray girder from the construction project outside his office lifts the chair on which he is sat out of his office and into mid-air. The scenes in which Lloyd is perched on the chair are teeth-grindingly difficult to watch at times, and your laughter is really an hysterical release of tension rather than amusement at what is taking place on screen. I'd love to have seen this in a cinema back in 1921 – the audience reactions must have been something to see, and would have made the viewing experience all the more enjoyable.