Originally posted to Facebook on 2/4/2018
The Freshman is our sixth film from 1925, and our third starring Harold Lloyd (not counting 1928's Speedy.)
Many of the films we've seen recently don't particularly conform to the stereotypes associated with the twenties, but unlike those films The Freshman is filled with Jazz Age images -- college life, boozy parties, and the sort of cavalier attitude that is now shorthand for this period. Lloyd fits in well with this type of youth culture; though he was 32 in 1925, he passes for younger, and is not immediately laughable as a college student.
Lloyd in this movie is just entering college, and is determined to be a football hero and a generally popular figure on campus. Instead he ends up a target of mockery for his attempts to fit in. At the same time, he begins a tentative romance with his boarding house's landlady's daughter, played by Jobyna Ralston, whom we saw in our last Lloyd feature, 1924's Girl Shy. Though this film is more thematically linked than some of his previous films, it does have some long comic sequences, including a college party, and the football scenes for which this film is probably most famous. These latter scenes seem reminiscent of a similar sequence we saw in 1923's Three Ages with Buster Keaton, which was perhaps an influence.
Another interesting note about this film is that Lloyd came out of retirement in 1947 to star in an unofficial sequel named The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, directed by Preston Sturges. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see that film too, if the project lasts that long.
But next week we see our seventh and last film from 1925, an early Japanese samurai film named Orochi. The up-to-date list is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
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