Girl Shy (1924)

Thanks for the memories!

Simply Perfect

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Although usually I'm not a fan of silent films, I found Girl Shy to be funny and a good romance story. Even though the beginning started out a little slow, by the end I couldn't stop watching! A classic everyone should watch in my opinion.

The storyline is a bit familiar to modern-day audiences. After having fallen in love with a girl despite his extreme shyness towards them, Harold finds that he cannot make her happy and decides to break things off. Once he finds out that she is getting married to a total jerk who is already married, he goes to break it up at the altar before it is too late. While a very common story still seen throughout romantic comedies today, Harold Lloyd's sophisticated storytelling style and frequent use of gags makes the film anything but familiar.While the chase scene is most remembered from this film, Lloyd is able to weave this masterful chase scene into a well structured narrative. His portrayal of a shy young man is realistic, comedic, and evokes sympathy from the audience. His romance with the rich girl is not overdramatic but natural and even cute. We really believe that these two people are in love even after a short two hour train ride. This movie's strength is in its ability to avoid cliche tropes and overly dramatize the romance instead leaving the out of this worldness to the gags and end chase scene instead of the characters. Girl Shy is Harold Lloyd building on his previous work to combine a well constructed story with his unique style of stunts that make us as the audience buy the reality of these impossible stunts while still respecting the title character as an everyday man just like us.

Almost 100 years since it was made (93 more exactly), and this film is still full of freshness. There are many comic situations to be seen in it. Also very poetic, it's Harold Lloyd! Full of spectacular and very dangerous scenes. The actors are simply charming, the film moves in great shape. Perhaps the author of the script for "The Graduate", with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, was inspired by this film, the story is somehow similar.

Harold Lloyd, "third genius" of silent comedy, made his independent debut with Girl Shy after years at Hal Roach studios, Hollywood's premier comedy factory. He chose to take with him his leading lady Jobyna Ralston and his directorial team Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. However the resulting picture is something of a departure from his earlier work – or, at least, it is a development of it. Girl Shy is less about knitting together gag after gag, taking instead the "story first" approach of Charlie Chaplin's full-length movies.And as with Chaplin, the story though emotionally sincere is never allowed to smother the comedy, and quite often a quick joke is used great effect, puncturing a romantic moment before it becomes too sentimental. The story is a little illogical at times – the flashbacks to Harold's "research" for his book seem at odds with the lack of confidence after which the whole picture is named. But those little vignettes offer some great satire on the romantic melodramas of the era, and generally the whole thing is put together with such a fine balancing of romance and humour that it moves along without the deficiencies ever becoming too apparent.Directors Taylor and Newmeyer have a great dynamic, it seems trying to make their styles match even though they handle different sections of the movie. Sam Taylor, (who did most of the comedy) uses a lot of close-up gags here, such as the business with the mousetrap, where some little detail will lead to some larger scale shenanigans. And similarly Newmeyer is putting in a lot of discreet close-ups for his non-comedy scenes, such as the shots of the crackerjack box that serve as a symbol for Ralston's memory of Harold. Together the two directors give the whole thing a kind of visual coherence that makes it all seem smooth and flowing. Newmeyer is on particularly fine form here, directing with a subtlety that allows the entire river meeting scene to be played out with no intertitles.Lloyd's features typically have a fast-paced editing pattern, largely to facilitate the often breakneck pace of his comedy sequences. The dash to the church which forms the finale of Girl Shy is perhaps the most brilliant of any Lloyd picture, mainly because of the rapidity with which it moves from one gag to the next. The way Harold leaps from, say, the back of a car onto a horse is funny in itself – as well as an impressive stunt. And yet, unlike his previous feature Safety Last!, which had quick edits throughout, Girl Shy also features a few longer takes in the romantic scenes, allowing the camera to linger over a facial expression.Which brings me onto Harold himself. He really makes the most of these close-ups. When he receives the bad news over his book, the camera holds him for a lengthy moment, and he really acts. He stays within the parameters of that comical character, but he emotes with complete dignity. Ultimately, Girl Shy is the complete realisation of the Harold Lloyd comedy character that would stick with him in future features (barring one or two deviations). Even though the story may be a little inconsistent as to exactly how "girl shy" Harold really is, this is the first movie to show him not only as a familiar, sympathetic figure, but one who is at risk of being hurt emotionally, not just by the dangers of his cliffhanging slapstick.