Harold Lloyd: „The Freshman“ (USA 1925)
Colleges are among the most important sports institutions in the USA, and they like to remember their great victories and their heroes. The slapstick film took on college sport several times. Examples include "College" (1927) with Buster Keaton and "Horse Feathers" (1932) with the Marx Brothers. The first feature-length sports movie of this kind was made in 1925 with Harold Lloyd in the leading role. "The Freshman" establishes the importance of college sports at the beginning via the media: the father of the young man, who is about to start his transfer to a prestigious college, wants to listen to the radio broadcast of a football game at this very college. Meanwhile, in his room, which has a large poster of the movie "The College Hero" on the door, the son sings along to the college team's anthem so loudly that he drowns out his father's radio broadcast. At college itself, the young man is just an outsider who is always the butt of everyone's jokes. In football, too, he is a joke who doesn't succeed at anything and is therefore only involved in training as a living dummy. However, the logic of the romantic comedy dictates that he wins over the woman he adores in the end because he is substituted in the decisive football game at a time when no one else is available and, despite his overzealousness, clumsiness and physical deficits, he manages to score the decisive touchdown at the last second.
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