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Q. I was pleased and disappointed to read your assessment of silent film comedian Harold Lloyd in your latest Great Movies installment; pleased by a piece on the neglected Lloyd and disappointed you didn't treat the great comic more favorably. It is tiresome to read another lament over Lloyd's inferiority to Chaplin and Keaton, especially when you admit that you had never seen a Lloyd film until "Safety Last."
You fault Lloyd for his "ordinariness," yet fail to note that Lloyd's naturalistic characterization was a big first for film comedy, and paved the way for hundreds of romantic comedies to come. Or that Lloyd's feature films combined the emotional resonance of Chaplin with the cinematic virtuosity of Keaton.
It was none other than Orson Welles who lobbied for Lloyd's genius years ago: "Harold Lloyd -- he's surely the most underrated of them all. The intellectuals don't like the Harold Lloyd character -- that middle-class, middle-American, all-American college boy. There's no obvious poetry to it, and they miss that incredible technical brilliance. ... Someday he'll get his proper place -- which is very high."
I envy you. You have many Harold Lloyd films ahead of you, and Lloyd has many tricks up his sleeve to surprise you with, whether in the formal cinematic beauty of "The Kid Brother," the uproarious surrealism of "Why Worry?" or the sheer crowd-pleasing fun of "The Freshman." I urge you to watch these comedies with an open mind. Let Lloyd's brilliance come to you on his own terms.
Yair Solan, Brooklyn, N.Y.
A. So I will. The Lloyd films were very hard to see for many years, and are now in national release in art and repertory theaters in preparation for DVD editions.