Harold and Maude

I absolutely love this movie. I had to watch it for a Cult Films class that I am taking at my university, and it ended up being my favorite film out of the quarter. It is a story about a boy (Harold) who is obsessed with staging his own suicide, drives a hearse, and attends funerals for fun. While he is at one of these funerals, he meets an elderly lady named Maude, who he finds absolutely captivating and eventually falls in love with. However, at the mean time, the boy's mother decides that it is about time for Harold to meet a girl and get married. So, she uses a computer program to generate dates for him.

Pretty funny movie, kind of off-beat, but I really enjoyed it, so i ended up purchasing it so that i could watch it whenever i feel like it.

"Harold and Maude" is a delightful, funny, moving, off-beat black comedy with a lot of heart. It is also one of the best and unusual on-screen romances I've seen. If the opposites attract each other, there have not been perhaps more different in every possible way screen couple than 20 years old Harold (Bud Cort) and Maude(charming, clever, multi-talented Ruth Gordon, the Oscar winning actress and three times Oscar nominee for writing) who is just about to turn 80. Harold is a rich kid who is obsessed with death and likes to stage very believable and hilarious succession of suicide attempts to impress his unflappable socialite mother who got used to them and not impressed anymore. Harold's others hobbies are driving the hearse and to attend funerals where he meets one day a woman who will change his life forever, 79 years young free-spirit, rebel, and fighter for "Liberty. Rights. Justice", Maude. She also likes to attend the funerals of the strangers. We won't learn much about Maude's life story but there will be one visual flash which gives us a very good idea that Maude knew a lot about death, losses, and suffering but she chose to celebrate, worship, and enjoy life to the fullest. This short poignant moment is a stroke of genius, and there are many of them in the truly unique, one of its kind movie. Maybe Hal Ashby had brought some of memories from his own childhood that included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, his dropping out of high school, getting married and divorced all before he was 19, into "Harold and Maude". Hal Ashby had made a series of memorable, intelligent, well acted films in the 70s, that included The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979) but it is "Harold and Maude" that has become the cult classic from the first days of its release and it more than deserves its status. The movie also benefits tremendously from the soundtrack of songs by Cat Stevens.

I've heard about this film for years but somehow never saw it till now. I'm sure that if I'd seen it when it came out in the early 70's I would have adored it. Now....well, it is dated. The themes which were very important in those breakaway years are a little old now.

We see a young, very disturbed man, trying to get his mother's attention by various stagings of suicides. She is a wealthy socialite whose values Harold despises. She buys him a Jaguar but he prefers driving an old hearse. She arranges him to meet girls but he succeeds in acting so wierd that they all run away. We are supposed to hate her and feel sorry for him...but after a while I was more sympathetic to her than I knew the film intended. He really is a putz!

His only interest, beyond staging suicides is attending funerals. This is where he meets his match--Maude, a frisky woman on the verge of turning 80. We don't know how old Harold is, exactly. To me he looked like a very young teenager. Maude loves life as much as Harold seeks death so she teaches him to dance, to sing, to play music, smoke dope, drink and ultimately to make love. Obviously she is the antithesis of his mom. Maude somehow has the knack for driving any car she picks up on the street and has no compunction about taking them. That's part of her "live free!" agenda. Again, all of this was wonderful during the years the picture was made. We see photos of Nixon and Pope Paul (the grim one) and Freud on the walls of various experts he is sent to consult. We get the message loud and clear---this is a time to throw off traditional authority and go for it.

The cast is great. Ruth Gordon, a one-of-kind herself is perfect for the role of Maude. (She was married to a much younger man, in "real life.") Bud Cort is excellent as Harold--at first so repressed and then gradually coming to life. When you first see the hints of a smile on his mask like face, you really do want to cheer.

Obviously there are a whole lot of people who love the film and if you think you might be one of them, after reading a variety of reviews, then go for it. Personally about halfway through I got a little tired of the increasingly zany antics Maude would pull and they ceased being charming and cute. I lived through those times and I can appreciate the message but enough, already!

there's about 10 minutes of written content in this film, the rest is filling in space. do we need to see 15 seconds of the policeman getting off his motorbike, putting the kickstand down, and walking over to the car? the way it's edited seems like they struggled to reach feature length. as for what content there is, in terms of drama the characters and plot are relatively underdeveloped and in terms of comedy what may have been original in 1971 seems cliched today.

While we like quirky, funny movies, just could not get into this one. It was just too odd and dated for us to enjoy.