Just when you thought it was safe to know about EITHER Charlie Chaplin OR Buster Keaton, a group of cranks has emerged from the film buffed woodwork to claim there was a "third genius" of silent films; namely, Harold Lloyd. These folks are trying to shame us into expanding our Pre-Talkies movie literacy beyond The Tramp and the Keystone Cops to encompass a milk-toast looking dude saddled with the Nom De Guerre of "Glasses." It turns out that Lloyd, a.k.a. Glasses, was more adept at trick camera angles and performing his own dare-devil stunts than either Chaplin or Keaton, dispensing with the concept of the film script to string together whatever the stunt coordinators thought up to produce so-called "thrill pictures." Even after a movie prop bomb went off unexpectedly, blowing away three of Lloyd's fingers, he persisted in popping on and off moving vehicles, careening down cliffs, and performing human fly stunts (most famously in his feature entitled SAFETY LAST!). Of these three silent "geniuses," Lloyd seems the one most suited to our current Generation Jackass.
Review of Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius
