Girl Shy

Girl Shy, directed by Sam Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer, is a silent comedy, the first feature Harold Lloyd independently produced, about a stuttering, shy tailor's apprentice who writes a guidebook on how to approach women and meets a wealthy young woman. The film's climactic chase to stop a wedding, in which Lloyd commandeers twelve different vehicles across Southern California, was described by Variety at the time as a sequence that would make "the average audience rise up and shout," and is often compared to Buster Keaton's train chase in The General. In 1919, Lloyd had lost the thumb and index finger of his right hand when a prop bomb he believed was fake exploded during a publicity photo shoot; for the rest of his career, including the dangerous stunts in this film, he performed while concealing the injury with a specially made prosthetic glove. Who it's for: anyone curious about a breathless chase sequence performed by a silent film star wearing a prosthetic glove to hide fingers lost in a real accident. Who it's not for: those unaccustomed to the slower pace typical of silent comedy, though the sheer speed and physical risk of the finale still impresses today.