Speedy

Harold Lloyd's last silent film — and one of the most effervescent love letters to New York City ever put on screen. Lloyd plays a baseball-obsessed young man whose hapless attempts to hold a job are complicated by his devotion to the city's last horse-drawn streetcar, operated by his girlfriend's grandfather. When a transit company schemes to steal the old man's franchise, Lloyd rallies to save the day in a wild climactic chase through the actual streets of 1928 Manhattan. The on-location footage is a treasure trove of Jazz Age New York: Coney Island, Times Square, the Polo Grounds during a real Yankees game (with Babe Ruth himself making a cameo). A joyful, breakneck comedy and an invaluable time capsule of a vanished city.