“The Freshman” by Harold Lloyd

Ken Schellenberg
4 min readJan 23, 2025

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For the New Year I thought it might be fun to look back at movies made one hundred years ago (I have an embarrassingly large Blu-ray collection). Perhaps I can make it a little project throughout the year — look back at films made in 1925.

The question is where to start. So many films are still around from 1925. A comedy would be a fine starting point — particularly if I want to lure my spouse into the project. Silent comedy is one of the bright spots in early film — and 1925 happened to be a wonderful year for silent comedy. Charlie Chaplin would have been an obvious first choice — as it happens, he made one of his greatest films ever in 1925. Buster Keaton also made some very fine films — and his existential style of comedy continues to be quite appealing to modern audiences. But on further consideration I thought Keaton and Chaplin might set the bar too high for subsequent 1925 films.

I settled on Harold Lloyd, now largely forgotten compared to Keaton or Chaplin, but in his era more financially successful than either Chaplin or Keaton. A large factor in this was his productivity: in the 1920s he made eleven silent features, all of which were huge hits. Chaplin’s features performed even better at the box office, but Chaplin only made two features in the entire decade. (Lloyd’s films also consistently outperformed Keaton’s at the box office.)

Harold Lloyd

Lloyd’s biggest hit of all was “The Freshman,” his 1925 feature. It’s a very appealing, slickly made film (Chaplin’s films always seemed stuck in 1916-style filmmaking — Lloyd’s is a well-structured story that seems modern in style compared to Chaplin. For modern audiences, it certainly doesn’t hurt that “The Freshman” has a story that transcends its era. A high school senior dreams of college and longs to be popular. He worries about fitting in. What teenager — even today — can’t identify with the story? The way he goes about it also seems modern — he patterns his behavior on what he sees in the movies. When he gets to college he is ridiculed by his peers, he tries to buy popularity, he seeks to gain respect through sports. He also meets a girl, who loves him for who he is despite his desperate attempts to be popular with the “cool” kids.

The story is so timeless and universal I could imagine teenagers enjoying the film — if that is they could be persuaded to spend an hour or so watching a silent black and white movie. Lloyd is more relatable than the existential angst of Keaton or the Victorian sentimentality of Chaplin. The film though is a lot more innocent than our current entertainments and the age of the actors might be discouraging (then as now, Hollywood casts actors well into their 30s as teenagers). But the film is consistently delightful — climaxing in a lengthy sequence where Harold triumphs on the football field.

There’s a visual motif of threading and unthreading that I noticed on this viewing. The Girl — while flirting with Harold — notices a button is loose. She sits close to him to sew it back on — and he pops off buttons to keep her busy sewing, and close to him. In a sequence later in the film, Harold throws a dance to buy popularity with other students. He splurges on new clothes but his tailor can’t quite finish in time. Harold attends the dance in half-sewn clothes, and many comic hijinks ensue as Harold’s clothes gradually fall apart. The last occurrence of the unthreading motif involves a gag on the football field which I won’t spoil by describing.

All in all, it’s a delightful, well-made film that will make you wonder he isn’t better known. It’s a fair question — when I was a young film enthusiast, it was nearly impossible to see his films. So what happened? When the film era ended, Lloyd transitioned into talkies. His films of the 1930s are quite good — but were not hits. It seems his character — an optimistic do-gooder who succeeds in the end — was out of step with the dour, cynical zeitgeist of the Great Depression. Eventually he gave up on film and lived off his wealth (he had invested wisely and survived the Depression quite well). He retained the rights to all his films but largely kept them out of circulation. In one of those weird twists of fate, his work is easier to see now in the streaming era than it has been for decades.

If I have enticed you at all to check out this century-old comedy, it’s readily available. Like virtually all of Lloyd’s silent features, “The Freshman” can be streamed on Max or the Criterion Channel. If you prefer physical media, the Criterion Collection sells an excellently restored edition on Blu-ray.

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Ken Schellenberg
Ken Schellenberg

Written by Ken Schellenberg

Retired IT guy - now trying to explore my creativity.

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