The sports student
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The sports student |
| Original title | The freshman |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1925 |
| length | 76 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Fred C. Newmeyer , Sam Taylor |
| script |
Sam Taylor , Ted Wilde , John Gray , Tim Whelan , Thomas J. Gray , Harold Lloyd |
| production |
Harold Lloyd for The Harold Lloyd Corp. and Pathé Exchange |
| music |
Don Hulette (1974) Robert Israel (2002) |
| camera | Walter Lundin |
| cut | Allen McNeil |
| occupation | |
| |
The sports student (original title: The Freshman ) is an American sports comedy from 1925 with Harold Lloyd in the lead role. The silent film, directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, was the greatest commercial success of Lloyd's career and influenced numerous later sports and college films from Hollywood. In 1990 The Freshman was inducted into the National Film Registry .
action
Harold Lamb's dream is to go to college and become a popular football player there. He has already sold numerous washing machines for this dream. He emulates a movie hero named The College Hero , who appears in movies as the acclaimed hero of a college football team. The naive-good-natured Harold even imitates the stupid behavior of the college hero , for example a silly greeting dance. On the train ride to college, Harold happened to be sitting next to the pretty Peggy, and they were immediately drawn to each other.
The first day of college turns into a disaster for Harold: the devious college villain plays Harold for a false friendship and leads him to give an impromptu speech in front of the entire college community, thereby embarrassing himself. Harold does the rest of the mockery of him as he is still constantly imitating the college hero's behaviors like the welcome dance. While Harold donates money to all sorts of people and considers himself a popular student, he becomes a ridiculous joke for the rest of the college. Only Peggy, whose mother Harold is staying with as a student, is his only real friend. Harold, meanwhile, tries to further increase his alleged popularity by joining the American football college team. However, Harold is not very talented in sports and only acts as a living dummy for the training of the other players. While the deluded Harold thinks he's accepted into the team, he's really just acting as a water boy.
A little later, Harold also organizes the Fall Frolic dance, which Chet Trask - the popular "college hero" and baseball team captain - organized last year. Everything seems perfect for Harold, but the tailor doesn't finish his suit in time. The host keeps embarrassing himself because parts of his makeshift suit keep falling apart. When the college villain molests Peggy, Harold becomes angry and knocks him down. The college villain then reveals to Harold what everyone really thinks of him and that he is actually just a joke. Harold is on the ground and Peggy advises him that he should try not to emulate a silly movie hero, but just be himself - then he would find acceptance.
Harold is hoping for his chance at the big football game, where he wants to show everyone his talent. What he does not know: He is not planned as a player, but only as a water boy. In the course of the game, most of the players in his team are injured in the scramble and the team is facing defeat. Harold can hope for a substitution in the last few minutes. The football coach hesitates because of Harold's apparently lacking talent, but gives him a chance because of the emergency situation and his tireless work in training. First of all, Harold is clumsy on the field. But with cunning and fighting, Harold creates a sensational touchdown in the last minute of the game . His university wins 6: 3 and Harold becomes a college hero. In addition to Harold's luck, Peggy gives him a note in which she confesses her love to him.
background
The stadium scenes with the mass audience at the college finals were filmed during the halftime break of the game between the University of California and Stanford University at California Memorial Stadium in November 1924.
The future film star Charles Farrell made a small appearance in the film as a student, who repeatedly rang the bell during Harold's party. The later well-known supporting actor Grady Sutton also made one of his first film appearances here as a student going to the college dean. In addition, Pete the Pup , who became famous as the dog of the little rascals in their film series, can be seen in a scene.
In 1929 Lloyd was sued by comedy writer HC Witwer for plagiarizing the plot of The Freshman from his short story The Emancipation of Rodney (1915). After HC Witwer's untimely death in August 1929, his widow continued the accusations against Lloyd. Her compensation charge was initially upheld by a court in 1930, but this decision was later revoked by another court and Lloyd did not have to pay any money. Suzanne Lloyd Hayes, Harold Lloyd's granddaughter, again sued the Adam Sandler film Waterboy in 2000 for possible plagiarism against The Freshman . That lawsuit was dismissed two years later.
reception
The sports student grossed the then sensational sum of 2.6 million US dollars at the US box office alone. Financially, it became Lloyd's most successful film and, behind Ben Hur, the highest-grossing film of 1925 in the US, even slightly before Chaplin's gold rush of the same year. For decades, The Freshman was still on lists of the most financially successful films of all time. Lloyd also loved The Freshman the most of his own comedies.
Even then, the film received very good reviews, as Mordaunt Hall wrote in the New York Times: "This is typical Harold-Lloyd joke that is made even more exciting by the introduction of tension in the sequences on the football field." Today, critics still rate the film positively, for example at the US critic portal Rotten Tomatoes , where The Freshman has a positive rating of 92% with 8.5 out of 10 points. The lexicon of international films praised the "convincingly structured story, peppered with excellent gag sequences". The Freshman also achieved film historical significance as one of the first and most influential college and sports films. For example, one reviewer noted that even today there is no college film that is not influenced in some respects by The Freshman .
In 1947, Preston Sturges ' comedy The Sin of Harold Diddlebock was a sort of sequel to The Freshman , set 20 years after the college events. Harold Lloyd took on the lead role again. In the opening scenes of the 1947 film, the silent ending scenes of Harold's victory with the college team from the 1925 film are shown again. However, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock suffered financial failure, whereupon Lloyd withdrew from the film business.
In Germany, the film was first broadcast on ZDF in 1980 .
Awards
As one of the first 50 American films, The Freshman was included in the National Film Registry in 1990. The National Film Registry lists films that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important. The prestigious American Film Institute also voted The Freshman 79th of the 100 Best American Comedies of All Time in 2000 .
Web links
- The Freshman in the Internet Movie Database (English)