This little snippet from Harold Lloyd's Young Mr. Jazz (1919) is meant to be comic dancing, a whirling-dervish sort of spin satirizing the jazzy steps of the day (though in 1919, this trend had barely begun). The bit at the end hilariously exposes Bebe's Daddy in a huddle with a sweet patootie he just picked up, a woman wearing a bizarre striped ensemble and a tall feathery hat.
I couldn't help but take this gif and s-l-o-w-w-w it down, just to see how the mad whirl might look at a much slower speed. And look at this!
This is just about the most graceful dancing I've ever seen, more typical of Harold's natural skill as a dancer. Really, it doesn't look silly at all, does it? He's sweeping her off her feet.
But then. . . then I noticed something. It's possible that the original dance has been "sped up" just a little, by something called undercranking (literally, cranking the camera more slowly so that fewer frames per second are exposed, thus making it play back faster). Just look at the piano player - he's a jittery blur! In the second version, he appears to be playing at a more normal speed.
Everyone else in the frame is either carefully still, or only gesturing minimally. What made me think of this tweaking of speed was a tiny video I just saw on The Freshman, in which Harold does a fast-footed "jig" that becomes his signature. It goes so fast you can barely see his feet. I found out, with a bit of disappointment, that this too was tweaked to make it look faster than it was.
Damn!
"Step right up and call me Speedy!"
"St-e-e-e-e-e-p r-r-r-r-i-i-ght up and ca-a-a-a-l-l-l me-e-e-e. . . not very Speedy."
I don't know why the use of special effects in a movie should bother me. It doesn't, except that dancing was one of Harold's natural skills, one of those things he didn't have to formally learn. To see it enhanced/messed with is a bit disillusioning, but Harold was a filmmaker, and the result was all. Harold's nickname (which I am sure he came up with himself) was Speedy, which kind of makes me shake my head a bit for obvious reasons. He always pushed himself to go farther, faster, longer, than anyone else, and was ferociously competitive. So if he couldn't dance fast enough to create a blur, he would make it LOOK like he could.
One has to wonder how much insecurity lay beneath that charming exterior. I don't think Harold was moody or broody (though his temper could be explosive), but for all his inspiration, I don't think he was introspective. He always moved relentlessly forward. At what cost, we can only guess, for the lives of his children were troubled. They had all the problems of rich kids who had come from desperately poor parents. Harold was determined to give his children "everything he never had", but was that what they needed? The question goes unanswered. We only know he could dance. Reminds me of those old Westerns where some cowboy shoots at the feet of the town drunk, yelling, "Dance! Dance! Faster!"
