Along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd is one of the giants of silent comedy. Despite his deserved place in such august company, Lloyd is perhaps the least screened of this hallowed trinity, and so we’re delighted to redress the balance with this screening of possibly his finest, funniest, and most enthralling film, containing one of the most genuinely iconic sequences in cinema history. When Harold moves to the city to make his fortune, the lies he tells his hometown fiancée about his success backfire when she comes to join him, resulting in all manner of scrapes.

We are delighted to welcome Stephen Horne to the IFI to perform at this screening. Stephen has long been internationally considered one of the leading silent film accompanists. A house pianist at London’s BFI Southbank for over thirty years, he regularly performs internationally and in recent years his accompaniments have met with acclaim at film festivals in Pordenone, Bologna, San Francisco, Telluride, Paris, Cannes, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, Seoul, Istanbul, Berlin and Vienna.

Notes by Kevin Coyne