Aeronaut Silent Film Club Vol. 2: Safety Last (1923)

AERONAUT SILENT FILM CLUB VOL. 2: SAFETY LAST
featuring a screening of SAFETY LAST (1923)
with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis
JUNE 30 2019, 7:30-10pm

GREETINGS, local film fans!

After a smashbang opening last March, the AERONAUT Silent Film Club continues with one of the unquestioned classics of the silent film era: SAFETY LAST featuring Harold Lloyd!

We've worked with fantastic accompanist Jeff Rapsis many times, and anyone who has caught him live will recall what a unique and magical experience he provides, and how special it is to watch these groundbreaking and influential films, most of which are rarely screened today.

NOTE on the Silent Film Club:
We want this to feel like a real community of silent film fans and to that end we've launching (lol) a more structured flavor to these screenings. You can expect them to happen 4x per calendar year, with a large-scale theme and/or anniversary dictating each event. We encourage folks to embrace the theme and dress appropriately, bring themed picnics and food, etc. – have as much fun with these themes as you'd like!

Admission is a mere $10 per person and seating is limited.

--

SYNOPSIS & INTERVIEW WITH JEFF RAPSIS
It's an image so powerful, people who've never seen the movie still instantly recognize it.

The vision of Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a huge clock, from the climax of his silent comedy Safety Last (1923), has emerged as a symbol of the "anything goes" spirit of early Hollywood and the magic of the movies.

The story of Safety Last follows young go-getter Lloyd to the big city, where he hopes to make his mark in business and send for his small town sweetheart. His career at a downtown department store stalls, however, until he gets a chance to pitch a surefire publicity idea—hire a human fly to climb the building's exterior.

However, when the human fly has a last-minute run-in with the law, Harold is forced to make the climb himself, floor by floor, with his sweetheart looking on. The result is an extended sequence blending comedy and terror that holds viewers spellbound.

Lloyd, along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, is regarded as one of the silent screen's three great clowns. Lloyd's character, a young go-getter ready to struggle to win the day, proved hugely popular in the 1920s. While Chaplin and Keaton were always favored by the critics, Lloyd's films reigned as the top-grossing comedies throughout the period.

The Aeronaut Brewing Co.'s Silent Film Club gives today's audiences the chance to experience early cinema as it was intended: on the big screen, with live music, and with an audience.

"Put the whole experience back together, and you can see why people first fell in love with the movies," said Rapsis, who practices the nearly lost art of silent film accompaniment.

Rapsis performs on a digital synthesizer that reproduces the texture of the full orchestra, creating a traditional "movie score" sound.

"Seeing Safety Last with an audience is one of the great thrill rides of the cinema of any era, silent or sound," Rapsis said. "Harold's iconic building climb, filmed without trick photography, continues to provoke audience responses nearly 100 years after film was first released."

Tributes to the clock-hanging scene have appeared in several contemporary films, most recently in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011), which includes clips from Safety Last.

See Harold Lloyd's iconic thrill comedy Safety Last (1923) on Sunday, June 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aeronaut Brewing Co., 14 Tyler St. (near Union Square), Somerville, Mass.

Admission is $10 per person and seating is limited; for tickets and information, visit www.aeronautbrewing.com.

CRITIC COMMENTS ON SAFETY LAST:
"Impossible to watch without undergoing visitations of vertigo, Safety Last's climactic sequence is all it's reputed to be.”

—TV Guide

"Harold Lloyd manages to make the characters sympathetic enough to carry the audience's concern on his journey of crazy stunts and mishaps. One of the best of this era."
—David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

"The climb has both comic and dramatic weight because it is both a thrilling exercise in physical humor and a thematically rich evocation of the pressures men feel to succeed, lest they be viewed as less than a man."
—James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk

For more info on our featured performer, visit www.jeffrapsis.com.

We hope to see you on 6/30, friends!

Cheers,

Jason & the AERONAUT Silent Film Club team

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