Get Out and Get Under

I have a production still in which Harold Lloyd and producer/director Hal Roach are obviously having an enjoyable time embellishing a shooting script with gag after gag. Employing a cast as long as the memo Hal is holding, "An Eastern Westerner" incorporated more production values than the average feature.

What's more, Hal Roach's smoothly expansive direction certainly gives the lie to the often-repeated claim that as a director, he was second-rate.

If another proof of the absurdity of this claim was needed, you have only to look at another of Lloyd's 1920 two-reelers, namely this "Get Out and Get Under". This short is a superbly orchestrated and timed little comedy in which no expense seems to have been spared.

The camera really moves when appropriate and all the action is brilliantly staged.

Indeed, one of Lloyd's favorite props, a streetcar, figures in the action and the cast includes wonderful Sunshine Sammy Morrison who shares some hilarious "business" with Lloyd.

Two of Harold Lloyd's favourite props are in use here. The first is the car, driven recklessly at speed, the second is the joke of remaining crouched down without realising your hiding place has been removed. You expect something terrible to happen to his car given the fuss he makes over it, but nothing that horrendous befalls it – unless you count being driven by Lloyd as something to be dreaded. He encounters all manner of mishaps as he races to the play being staged by the local amateur dramatics troupe, of which he is a starring member. On a number of occasions he has to jump out of the motor and run back to fetch something that has fallen out of the back. There's nothing unusual about this other than the fact that he doesn't bother stopping the car when he does so…

This is one of those early shorts of Harold's that has a boundless energy to match His character's single-mindedness of purpose, and it contains plenty of laughs. One surreal moment occurs however when the car breaks down and Harold is struggling to revive it. Spotting a junkie injecting himself in a doorway, Harold deftly picks the junkie's pocket and uses the contents of his syringe to get the motor running again.

Being after his accident, Harold wears gloves for pretty much this entire film. This is still under the Hal Roach studios in 1920 & it is less refined slapstick style & not as complex as Harold would develop in later films. Think Harold is self-conscious about his hands in this, not only because of the gloves, but his stunts in this one are no where near the ones he would do later. Mildred Pierce is the girl in this love story but her major work is in Harold (the boy) dream sequence in the film beginning where he dream Mildred went & married someone else & he found out while trying to pose for a photo portrait & arrives too late to do anything about it. This is a theme Lloyd would develop more thoroughly in later films. Some of the chase sequence with the police pursuit has some inventive sequencing & the pace is fast & furious. While this is a couple of notches below his better films, this one is pleasant. The version I saw from the TCM set is only just over 25 minutes, though it doesn't seem to be missing anything. Watch for the sequence where Harold disappears inside his car. It looks impossible & clever, & is the most intriguing stunt by Harold in the film.

This is a good Harold Lloyd comedy that gets plenty of mileage out of the material, and it has quite a few amusing moments. It is one of many silent comedies that take one situation and then stretch it out as far as possible.

The top silent comedians such as Lloyd could often find quite a variety of possibilities in a simple premise.

In this case, most of the story has Harold in a desperate rush to get where he is going. The number of obstacles he encounters is pretty creative, from the expected, such as an uncooperative automobile, to unexpected obstacles such as a friendly little boy and a cute dog. There is some decent slapstick, and there are also some good sight gags, a couple of which might be the movie's best moments. It works pretty well overall.

Fair Harold Lloyd short which presents several gags he would re-use and improve upon in his later feature films. It opens with a scene at a photographer's studio where Harold discovers that his girl Mildred Davis is about to marry another man - but it all turns out to have been just a dream. He's involved in amateur theatricals and, being late for a performance, rushes out to the venue in his beloved car: amid the vehicle's breaking down on him, he falls foul of an elderly neighbor and a colored child; the race-against-time, then, culminates in the usual pursuit by a horde of policemen. The automobile trouble eventually gets a bit repetitive, but the film nevertheless includes the occasional inspired and hilarious gag - such as when Harold 'disappears' inside the car's engine compartment, an actor accidentally falling off the stage (after being 'killed') promptly going back up to resume his performance i.e. affecting a typically melodramatic 'exit' and, especially, when Lloyd sees a junkie getting high in the street and reasons that, if he injects his vehicle with the same substance, it will be likewise revitalized - which is what happens, as the car goes off on its own soon after 'taking' its fix!