100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #121: Bumping into Broadway (1919)

Directed by Hal Roach. Starring Harold Lloyd.

Harold Lloyd is not a household name - at least, not in the sense of Chaplin or Buster Keaton, or even perhaps Laurel and Hardy - and yet, Lloyd’s filmography is robust with comedy films that added his own unique style and texture to the slapstick comedy scene.

Slapstick comedy in the scope of cinema is not often regarded as a high standard of artistic filmmaking. Physical comedy is marked up to cheap laughs in the same way that jump scares are seen as cheap frights in horrors. Regardless, slapstick performers like Jerry Lewis considered the act to be of very high artistic value. In his half autobiographic, half instructional book “The Great Filmmaker”, (beloved to Scorsese yet hated by Orson Welles) Lewis spends a great deal of time stressing the mastery required to perfectly craft a comedy, requiring precise timing, editing, delivery, sound design, along with perfect application of every other quality on the screen.

In reality, whether Lewis was truly genius or merely overconfident, before sound there was very rarely an option for comedy based on wit. With dialogue being limited to occasional title cards, comedy of the silent era had to be situational and embodied itself always in a physical performance. This concept of comedy without much spoken word was not a new concept to the earlier filmmakers, as most of the performers of the first decades of cinema came straight from the vaudeville stage, which also relied heavily on physical comedy in a large noisy theater.

Watching a performance like that of Lloyd’s is increasingly valuable seeing as the film is now well over 100 years old. While never a vaudeville actor himself, Lloyd’s performances seem to translate the theater performances of the era to the screen, preserving them forever in quality films.

Bumping into Broadway (1919) features the first two-reel film appearance of Lloyd’s signature character - a sort of “average boy next door” - which became known as the “Glasses Boy”. The concept was to base films around the most unsuspecting of protagonists, a real nobody who would assumingly live very plainly, and follow him as he is dragged into wildly bizarre and fascinating circumstances.

Before Lloyd’s “Glasses” character was “Lonesome Luke”, albeit an awkward period in his career. The bumbling hobo Luke was nothing more than a studio copy of the Tramp character, created in hasty response to the great popularity and success found by Chaplin. Recognizing this creative overlap, Lloyd asked permission to try his Glasses character on the screen for the next of his two-reel films. This character, which had appeared previously in one-reel shorts, would be the one to forever define his career.

While Lloyd would go on to make 13 consecutive two-reel films with his Glasses character, followed by 11 feature films, many of which debatably higher in quality and substance than that of Bumping into Broadway, this film marks a significant moment in Lloyd’s career (and is also the last time Lloyd can be seen on screen with right hand fully intact, as his thumb and index finger were lost in an accident). It is because of this film that his other greats like The Eastern Westerner, Never Weaken, Safety Last!, The Freshman, For Heaven’s Sake, and Speedy exist. These films are only a few to mention among his great works, most of which focus not only on fast paced, carefully arranged action, but also focus deeply on character development and often highlight social dilemmas of the era.

Bumping into Broadway is a very unique case, and extremely valuable for its contents. Filmmaking techniques would see great advancements in the following decade of the 1920s, making this film’s 1919 release a unique capstone for the progress of filmmaking in the 1910s. It features a standard silent film look - the seldom moving fourth-wall camera angle - but with acting, action, and performances which exceed that in films released earlier in the decade. While his later films develop Lloyd’s character more and explore more of his abilities and character, Bumping into Broadway is the first, and a terrific film to discover Lloyd’s character.

The plot is standard; a man down on his luck gunning for the girl, hoping to pay his rent and hers, escaping the landlady, very soon after falls into a stroke of luck, gets the money, escapes police, and saves the girl from a brute. However, Lloyd brings a wholesome tone to the heart of the story, and exciting creativity and agility to the action.

Modern day action films such as John Wick have been paying their respects to the silent era, seeing as both share a focus on elevated reality through choreographed action. Watching a film like Bumping into Broadway, one can see parallels to films like Kill Bill, John Wick, and even The Apartment. After delving into Lloyd’s works, parallels will rear their head in the most unusual and obscure of places.

Silent films are understandably considered to have no sound, but this isn’t quite true. Most silent films were intended to be accompanied with some level of music, whether it be an orchestral ensemble, an organist, or simply a pianist. Lloyd was famous for having a high standard for the presentations of his films, being so adamant in his opposition to pianos that he restricted distribution of his films based on whether they could provide more than piano accompaniment; a quality which most likely drove his films and name into obscurity in later years. The version of Bumping into Broadway restored and scored by Criterion is very nicely scored to account for Lloyd’s particular standards, while there are other versions which clearly have forgotten his piano prejudices.

A two-reel film is very brief by today’s standard, but in the 1910s would have still been considered a substantial work. Taking the time to watch only one episode of Lloyd’s career will most likely lead to a binge of the whole of his works, as the films are funny, wholesome, exciting, and often take the time to highlight many environments and lifestyles of a period long gone.