High and Dizzy (classic two-reeler)

Drunks are not funny.

The acceptance of this fact has cut down on traffic fatalities, enabled families to face a problem once swept under the rug, and is part of a number of realizations that must be faced before taking that first shaky step on the road to sobriety.

Unfortunately, we’ve paid a heavy cinematic price for this enlightened attitude.  I don’t bemoan the loss of Foster Brooks or even Dudley Moore in Arthur, but silent comedy drunks, when done by the likes of Chaplin or Keaton, well, it’s like watching a wonderful, shitfaced ballet.

Harold Lloyd’s two-reeler High And Dizzy is definitely a *high* point in silent drunken pantomime (pun intended.  OK.  OK.   Puns about drinking aren’t funny either, but that’s not because of a societal shift in attitudes.  It’s just because they’re puns).  Lloyd and a friend get completely blotto and attempt to make their way home, ending up in a hotel where they can sleep off their drunken afternoon binge.  Throw in a sleep-walking love interest and you’ve got 26 minutes of near disasters, perfectly choreographed mayhem, and visual comedy that depends on split second timing that can stop and turn on a dime.

Admittedly, there’s not a great deal that’s new joke-wise.  You get bits where two guys put on the same coat at the same time, each one with an arm in one sleeve.  There’s the always reliable loading lift that arbitrarily goes up and down in a city sidewalk, descending and taking Lloyd out of sight just as a policeman rounds a corner, or rising as an inebriated Lloyd is walking down the street and about to step forward into an empty shaft.  The drunk routine is like a virtuoso piece of music.  The notes never change, and  it’s all about the performance.  Complicated, but clean and precise.  Difficult, but appearing effortless.  The drunk has three emotional gears he can shift between: happy camaraderie, confusion, and belligerence.  There’s more than enough range to provide variety and pacing for a two-reeler.

Toward the end of High and Dizzy, there’s even a hint  of things to come, as a drunken Lloyd pursues his sleep-walking love out onto a building ledge.  The sequence  plays very much like an initial run through for high-wire antics that will be more fully realized a few years later in Safety Last!

Finally, High and Dizzy even manages to set up and pay off a completely screwy ending, which, while being abrupt and unlikely, is still thoroughly satisfying.

Look.  I know no one wants to hear this, but drunks are funny.  Sometimes.

Just look at Harold Lloyd.