Cult Movie: Harold and Maude (1971)
Landmark 1970s Black Comedy Tugs at Heart Strings, Funny Bone
Oct 4, 2008
The film tells the ultimate May-December (31st?) romance of 20-year-old Harold Chasen, a death-obsessed rich kid, and Maude, nearly 80, whose free spirit and love of life masks a dark past.
The low-budget “little” film began life as a 20-minute UCLA film school project by screenwriter Colin Higgins, perhaps best known for writing Silver Streak. The movie was just the second directed by the great Hal Ashby, whose subsequent films included some of the most iconic movies of the 70s, including The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home and Being There.
Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon co-star
As Harold, then-23-year-old Bud Cort holds his own with 74-year-old Old Hollywood stalwart Ruth Gordon, whose career was undergoing something of a renaissance. Cort’s performance as the callow, misunderstood, profoundly depressed Harold plays perfect counterpoint to the quirky, life-affirming Maude.
Harold lives with his widowed mother in palatial Northern California splendor. He drives a hearse and spends his days attending funerals and staging fake suicides. This is all meant to shock his disaffected society mother (actress Vivian Pickles) into developing a genuine interest in him.
Harold meets Maude at – where else? -- a funeral; seems she gets a kick out of them, too. A friendship ensues. Meantime, other forces are set to work on Harold by his out-of-touch mother, including a series of disastrous dating-service fix-ups. Harold must cope with other forces, too: There’s Uncle Victor, a one-armed Army general who’s compelled by Harold’s mother “to make a man” out of the fey man-child.
Periodically, the prudish family priest appears, making vain attempts to show Harold a righteous path. And the Chasen family psychiatrist tries to draw Harold out, with little success.
Harold and Maude's Sex Scene Handled Tastefully
The love story develops nicely – and yes, the bedroom scene is handled tastefully – while the b-stories work well both as comic relief and as ways to propel the love story through a series of paces to an inevitable conclusion subtly suggested early in the film.
There is one magnificent, purely cinematic moment in the film. It is a single shot of Maude’s wrist. It lasts only a moment. And yet, it completely explains both her love of life and her overwhelming sadness, something suggested only fleetingly during the movie.
The age disparity between the title characters hurt the film in its initial release; evidently, it was an ick-factor some couldn’t overcome. But Ashby’s gentle handling of the relationship mutes the issue; these are two people who fall in love despite their differences, not because of them.
Offering superb supporting performances are character actors G. Wood as the pompous shrink, Eric Christmas as the earnest but clueless priest, Charles Tyner as Uncle Victor and the hilarious Ellen Geer as one of Harold’s misbegotten computer dates.
Outstanding Cat Stevens score
The film features a great score by, of all people, pop singer Cat Stevens; the songs are never intrusive, alternately winsome and foreshadowing, and extremely effective in conveying the differing moods and shadings of various scenes.
Harold and Maude clearly is a product of the 60s counterculture. But it has aged well – unlike many films of the era that strained to make Big Social Statements. The lead characters are likeable rebels, easy to root for and the humor is mostly gentle but effective (especially regarding nonconformity, militarism and consumerism). This is a movie about love in one of its most surprising permutations, and it’s not to be missed.
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