The Freshman

Harold Lloyd's most personal film — and his biggest box-office hit. A small-town boy arrives at college determined to be the most popular man on campus, but his eager-to-please awkwardness makes him a laughingstock: the whole school is secretly mocking the "jig" dance he thinks is making him a hit. Lloyd plays the mounting humiliation with such genuine vulnerability that you feel every wince, and the climactic football game — where the freshman finally gets his chance to play — is one of the most thrilling and hilarious extended sequences in silent comedy. The film is also a surprisingly sharp satire of American conformity and the desperate need to belong. Lloyd, always the most accessible of the great silent comedians, here creates a character so universally relatable that the film hasn't dated a day.