July 1: The Freshman (1925 -- Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)

★★★★

In a time that filmmakers would use melodrama to engage its audience, Lloyd created one of his most affective films in The Freshman.  It’s impossible not to empathize with Harold Lamb here.  The freshman is an archetypal American figure: optimistic, determined, and naïve.  Set upon becoming the Big Man on Campus, the hard-working Harold soon finds himself being abused by a jaded clique of college students who fake their like for him in order to trick him into using his limited money to buy them ice cream and sponsor a party.  Because of his naiveté, Harold doesn’t realize the ruse as they laugh at his jokes, imitate him, and pursue him to dance with; in fact, the group is mocking him to his very face in all these situations.  As Harold obliviously allows himself to be used by these people, our sympathy for him builds, stoked even further by comic misadventures like his unraveling suit and his role as the tackle dummy at football practice.  Our involvement climaxes when the angry Cad reveals the ruse to Harold, who tries to keep on a brave face before he breaks down into tears.  It’s inconceivable that Harold Lloyd at one time wanted to delete the crying scene from the film since this is the moment of our most intense involvement with the character.

The big ending of The Freshman has its own hooks.  Credit much of the success of this concluding episode to Pat Harmon as the Football Coach.  Harmon’s Coach is a bull of a man, prone to very physical expressions of his emotions like throwing his hands in the air, running in circles and bending over as if to beat the earth itself.  As his bench gets slimmer, the bad-tempered, stubborn man adamantly refuses to let Harold play even as the clock is running out and the refs are telling him he’ll have to forfeit.  His players can’t convince him to run Harold in and, as he fusses and fumes on the sidelines, Harmon takes the tension in the film to a new peak.  The Coach is also responsible for one last cruel joke on Harold, sending the eager sub in only to change sweaters with one of the other players.

But Harold finally gets to play, and as the seconds tick away, he almost saves the game and then quickly loses it again, with intercuts to the Coach’s sideline reactions building pressure at each shift and getting us more invested in the action.  Of course, this is a comedy and Harold is ultimately able to pull off a victory for Tate thanks to the same determination and optimism he brought to the school at the beginning of the film.  And he gets the girl.  But we've been put though an emotion ringer in getting there.

It’s The Freshman’s engagement with the audience that makes this comedy so strong.  The humor is cute, but it also develops the character and adds to the audience’s involvement in what’s happening.  If Lloyd's films break down in “thrill” and “character” categories, The Freshman is clearly in the latter.  The personality of Lloyd’s Harold is the spring that drives this movie and that keeps us in it.