Safety Last!

A small-town clerk moves to the city to make his fortune and tells his sweetheart back home he is a success. When she visits, he has to keep up the act, and to earn real money he arranges a publicity stunt in which a friend will climb the outside of the department store. The friend is chased off by a policeman, so the clerk does the climb himself, floor by floor, dodging pigeons, a collapsing ledge, a flagpole, and finally a clock that leaves him hanging from its hands high above the street. The climb is the most famous image in silent comedy. Harold Lloyd produced the film, Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor directed, and real buildings on real streets were used with carefully placed platforms just out of frame. The film is in the public domain.