Film Review
One of the best known and most successful of Harold Lloyd's talkies,
The Milky Way may lack the
spectacular visual stunt gags that we associate with Lloyd but it has
plenty to compensate for this in the way of wholesome knockabout
fun. Based on a popular stage play of the same name by Lynn Root
and Harry Clork, first performed on Broadway in 1934, this is an early
example of the screwball comedy, a fast-moving and intoxicating humour
fest which often veers towards the oddly surreal.
The film was directed by Leo McCarey who had previously
helmed the Marx Brothers madcap masterpiece
Duck Soup (1933)
and would go onto to direct the screwball classic
The Awful Truth (1937).
Lloyd is universally acknowledged as a comedy giant of the silent era
but his sound films are generally looked down on as inferior
creations. The comedian, now well into middle-age, was no longer
as agile as he had once been and the limitations of the early sound
recording equipment limited what could feasibly be put onto the cinema
screen. Yet the magic is still there. Lloyd still has that
irresistible flair for anarchic fun, is still able to play sympathetic
characters and still manages to deliver the laughs by the cart-load, as
this film amply demonstrates. Only a three-week-old corpse with a
humour bypass can sit through a Harold Lloyd film without laughing.
The Milky Way was later remade
by producer Samuel Goldwyn as the lavish musical comedy
The Kid from Brooklyn (1946),
with Danny Kaye in the lead role and Lionel Stander reprising the part
of Spider Schultz. When he bought the rights, Goldwyn acquired
the original negative and all available prints of Lloyd's film and
(shock horror) destroyed them. Fortunately, a few prints
survived, including one held in Harold Lloyd's own personal
collection. Lloyd's film is easily superior to the glitzy brash
Goldwyn remake, and it is certainly much, much funnier. But
then again, how could Danny Kaye possibly
compare with a heavyweight like Harold Lloyd?
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Burleigh Sullivan is a timid, inoffensive milkman who wouldn't harm a
fly, yet one evening he somehow manages to knock out a man who had been
antagonising his sister. When it transpires that Burleigh's
victim is the world middleweight boxing champion Speed McFarland, the
newspapers have a field day. The truth of the matter is that
Speed was floored not by Burleigh, but by the boxer's sparring partner
Spider Schultz when the milkman ducked as the latter tried to land him
a punch. Speed's manager, Gabby Sloan, sees an opportunity to
make some easy money and begins to promote Burleigh as a boxer, fixing
the fights so that the former milkman always wins. Burleigh's
initial motivation for taking up boxing was to raise money to pay for a
doctor to take care of his sick horse, but his easy successes soon
begin to go to his head. He really believes that he is a prize
fighter and has no idea that Gabby has built up his reputation merely
to knock him back down again in a fight with Speed McFarland...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.