Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Girl Shy!

While Safety Last is by far his most famous film, for me the greatest Harold Lloydkino is 1924's Girl Shy. Lloyd plays a kissless handholdless supreme gentleman writing a book about his totally fictitious love affairs in which he fantasises himself as an alpha Chad seducing such 1920s archetypes as "The Vampire" and "The Flapper". I don't know what the fuck those are supposed to be either but I'm sure it was biting social commentary at the time.

I think "The Vampire" is supposed to be like a goth girl but more theatrical.

Our hero's life improves when he meets Mary, played by semi-regular Lloyd costar Jobyna Ralston, whose name was Jobyna Ralston, which is the most 1920s name I've ever heard. Harold and Mary hit it off over a dog-concealing train ride (not an euphemism) and soon get to talking. She's soon rooting for him to sell his book but the publisher and his staff ridicule it for the /r9k/-tier greentext that it is, causing Harold to self-sabotage by dumping Mary in the fear that he's a failure and unworthy of her love. Although the movie has a happy ending, it's striking how close it comes to being 2019's The Joker instead.

Lloyd and Keaton basically invented the literally-me protagonist, but in the 1920s there was still enough hope they could plausibly make out OK - a detail that dates these pictures far more than the lack of sound.

Fortunately the publisher is persuaded to put out Harold's book as a comedic piece, so maybe Tommy Wiseau of The Room fame is a more apt comparison. This prompts the final act in which Harold must race against time to stop a heartbroken Mary from marrying a douche even the intertitles describe as forgettable, because presumably this sort of rom-com plot was seen as stale and predictable even then. No matter, though, as this self-conscious contrivance only serves as a pretext for the best high-speed action sequence in movie history, only arguably rivalled by The Road Warrior's tanker chase (yes), in which Harold burns through at least four cars, three horses, a fire engine, a tram, a motorcycle and a carriage to get to the wedding venue in time to defeat the douche and save his oneitis.

No greenscreen, no CGI, just an absolute madlad living in the moment.

Were this movie made today, a character like Harold would most likely be vilified as a hash-tag-toxic incel unworthy of love, but in the 1920s people were still permitted to be human, so Harold joins Vincent Gallo's character from Buffalo 66 in the pantheon of unreconstructed shitlords who shrugged off the grey sludge of modernity to claim their waifus in that constellation over the rainbow.