Harold and Maude

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Harold and Maude
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Hal Ashby
Produced by	Colin Higgins Charles B. Mulvehill
Written by	Colin Higgins
Starring	Ruth Gordon Bud Cort Vivian Pickles Eric Christmas Cyril Cusack Ellen Geer G. Wood
Music by	Cat Stevens
Cinematography	John Alonzo
Editing by	William A. Sawyer Edward Warschilka
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	December 20, 1971 (1971-12-20)
Running time	91 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$1,200,000 (est.)

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Harold and Maude is a 1971 American film directed by Hal Ashby. The film, featuring slapstick, dark humor, and existentialist drama, revolves around the exploits of a morbid young man, Harold (played by Bud Cort), who drifts away from the life that his detached mother prescribes for him, as he develops a relationship with septuagenarian Maude (played by Ruth Gordon).

The film is number 45 on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Funniest Movies of all Time^[1], number 69 in its list for most romantic ^[2] and number 42 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”^[3] The film was a commercial flop in its original release, and critical reception was extremely mixed. However it has since developed a large cult following.^[4]

The screenplay upon which the film was based was written by Colin Higgins, and published as a novel in 1971. The movie was shot in the San Francisco Bay Area. Harold and Maude was also a play on Broadway for some time. A French adaptation for television, translated and written by Jean-Claude Carrière, appeared in 1978. It was adapted for the stage and performed in Québec, starring Roy Dupuis.

Contents 1 Plot synopsis 2 Themes 3 Harold's "deaths" 4 Honors 5 Cast 6 Music 6.1 Track listing 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Plot synopsis

Harold Chasen is a nineteen-year-old boy obsessed with death – so much so that he torments his mother (Vivian Pickles) with elaborately staged fake suicides.

Harold meets Maude, 79 years old, at a funeral. The pair form a bond, with Maude slowly opening Harold to the sensual pleasures of music and art – and the general anarchy of living for the moment and doing whatever one pleases. Their relationship turns sexual, despite Harold's mother's best attempts to get her son to settle down with someone she considers appropriate.

Upon Maude's 80th birthday – at a surprise party Harold has thrown for her – Maude reveals that she has taken poison and will be dead by midnight. She restates her firm belief that 80 is the proper age to die.

Harold has Maude rushed to the hospital, but it is too late. In the final sequence, it appears that a grief-stricken Harold drives his car (a Jaguar he had earlier transformed to look like a hearse) off a cliff. The final shot, however, reveals Harold – with the banjo Maude gave him strapped around his shoulder – upon the cliff. He walks away, picking out on his banjo the notes to Cat Stevens' "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out".

[edit] Themes

Hal Ashby, the director of the film, shared certain ideals with the era’s youth culture, and in this film he contrasts the doomed outlook of the alienated youth of the time with the hard-won optimism of those who endured the horrors of the early 20th century, contrasting nihilism with purpose. Maude's past is revealed in a glimpse of the concentration camp ID number tattooed on her arm as well as her talk with Harold about using an umbrella to defend herself from thugs at political meetings before moving to America.

Harold is part of a society in which he is of no importance, existentially he is without meaning. Maude has survived and lives a life rich with meaning. It is in this existential crisis, shown against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, that we see the differences between one culture, personified by Harold, handling a meaningless war, while another has experienced and lived beyond a war that produced a crisis of meaning.

[edit] Harold's "deaths"

Harold tells Maude when they are talking candidly at her house the reasons why he fakes his death so often. When Harold was at boarding school, he set his science lab on fire. Escaping the fire, Harold slid down the laundry chute and ran home to hide. When the police came, Harold could not be found. Believed to be dead the police came to his house and told Mrs. Chasen (Harold’s mother) that Harold was dead. Coming up from the back balcony, Harold watched as his mother fell over in grief for the police officers. Harold then states that, "I decided then I enjoyed being dead".

Throughout the movie, Harold appears to "die" a total of seven to eight times. He tells his psychologist that he has made similar attempts 15 times, a rough estimate.

1. Hanging himself in opening scene: Harold hangs himself while his mother is on the phone in the opening scene, in which she barely blinks twice.

2. Slitting his throat in his mother’s bathroom: after this act, we see Harold seeing a psychiatrist.

3. Floating dead in pool: Harold floats face down, fully clothed, as his mother swims laps around him.

4. Shooting towards his head: Harold initially points a gun at his mother and then shoots close to his head as his mother is reading off the questionnaire for his dating service.

5. Fire: For the first blind date, Harold pretends to set himself on fire, scaring away his date.

6. Hand chopping: The second blind date ends abruptly with Harold chopping off a fake hand.

7. Juliet scene: For the final date, Harold performs a seppuku by stabbing himself with a fake harakiri sword in the stomach. Instead of this date running off as the others have, Sunshine Doré instead joins in: she recites lines from Romeo and Juliet, stabs herself and “dies” with him.

8. Car: Harold sends his Jaguar/hearse off a cliff. From the previous scene, the audience may believe Harold was stricken with enough grief from Maude’s death to kill himself (mirroring viewers' impressions from the opening scene). However, the camera pans up to the cliff to show Harold playing Maude’s banjo and dancing away casually.

[edit] Honors

Harold and Maude is #45 on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Years... 100 Laughs, the list of the top 100 films in American comedy. The list was released in 2000. Two years later, AFI released the list AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions honoring the most romantic films for the past 100 years, Harold and Maude ranked #69.^[2] Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #4 on their list of “The Top 50 Cult Films.”^[5]

In June 2008, AFI revealed its "Ten Top Ten" – the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres – after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Harold and Maude was acknowledged as the ninth best film in the romantic comedy genre.^[6][7]

American Film Institute recognition

• 2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs #45
• 2002: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions #69
• 2006: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers #89
• 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10 #9 Romantic Comedy

At the 29th Golden Globe Awards, Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon received a nomination for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy film, respectively.^[8][9]

Critic Roger Ebert, in a review dated January 1, 1972, did not care for the film. He wrote, "And so what we get, finally, is a movie of attitudes. Harold is death, Maude life, and they manage to make the two seem so similar that life’s hardly worth the extra bother. The visual style makes everyone look fresh from the Wax Museum, and all the movie lacks is a lot of day-old gardenias and lilies and roses in the lobby, filling the place with a cloying sweet smell. Nothing more to report today. Harold doesn’t even make pallbearer."

[edit] Cast

• Dame Marjorie “Maude” Chardin (Ruth Gordon) is a 79-year-old spitfire who wears her hair in braids across her head like a crown. Maude is an abysmal driver who delights in listening to music and believes in living each day like it is your last. The movie does not disclose anything about her tattoo, which is believed to be a Nazi concentration camp tattoo.
• Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) is a nineteen-year-old, pale boy (he becomes more tan as the film progresses) who craves human interaction but is smothered by his mother’s controlled, materialistic world. Obsessed with death, he drives a hearse, attends random funerals and fakes suicides, for effect. Through meeting and falling in love with Maude, he discovers there is more to life than death and begins living for the first time.
• Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles) is Harold’s mother. An affluent, middle-aged woman who surrounds herself with the best of everything. Hoping to straighten out her son, Mrs. Chasen arranges computer dates and bestows a myriad of lavish gifts upon him, all to no avail.
• Glaucus (Cyril Cusack) is the sculptor who makes the ice statue of Maude and lends them his tools to transport the tree.
• General Victor Ball (Charles Tyner) is Harold’s uncle. He vainly attempts to entice Harold into joining the armed forces.
• Sunshine Doré (Ellen Geer) is an actress. On Harold’s third blind date, she lies down and “dies” beside him.
• Priest (Eric Christmas): Maude steals his car. He also tells Harold not to marry Maude.
• Psychiatrist (G. Wood)
• Candy Gulf (Judy Engles) is Harold’s first blind date, whom he scares off by feigning to set himself afire.
• Edith Phern (Shari Summers) is Harold’s second blind date, whom he scares off by pretending to cut off his hand. This distasteful antic prompts Mrs. Chasen send Harold to talk to Uncle Victor about the armed forces.
• Motorcycle Officer (Tom Skerritt, credited as “M. Borman”)
• Director Hal Ashby has an uncredited cameo in the picture, watching a model train at an amusement park.

[edit] Music

Harold And Maude[10][11]
Soundtrack by Cat Stevens
Released	December 28, 2007 (2007-12-28)
Label	Vinyl Films
Producer	Cat Stevens Paul Samwell-Smith

The soundtrack is by Cat Stevens, and includes two songs, “Don’t Be Shy” and “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” that he composed specifically for the movie, and which were unavailable on vinyl for over a decade; they were eventually released in 1984 on the compilation Footsteps in the Dark. A vinyl LP soundtrack was released in Japan, although without the two songs Cat Stevens wrote for the film, and including five songs not actually in the film (“Morning Has Broken,” “Wild World,” “Father & Son,” “Lilywhite” and “Lady D'Arbanville”). The first official soundtrack to the film was released in December 2007^[10], by Vinyl Films Records, as a vinyl-only limited edition release of 2500 copies. It contained a 30-page oral history of the making of the film, the most extensive series of interviews yet conducted on "Harold and Maude."

[edit] Track listing

This is the track listing for the first official release of the soundtrack to Harold and Maude.

• Side one
  1. "Don't Be Shy"
  2. "On The Road To Find Out"
  3. "I Wish, I Wish"
  4. "Miles From Nowhere"
  5. "Tea for the Tillerman"
  6. "I Think I See The Light"
• Side two
  1. "Where Do the Children Play?"
  2. "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out"
  3. "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (banjo version)" – previously unreleased
  4. "Trouble"
  5. "Don't Be Shy (alternate version)" – previously unreleased
  6. "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (instrumental version)" – previously unreleased
• Bonus 7" single
  1. "Don't Be Shy (demo version)" – previously unreleased
  2. "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (alternative version)" – previously unreleased

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Harold and Maude

• Harold and Maude at the Internet Movie Database
• Harold et Maude at the Internet Movie Database French tv adaptation written by Jean-Claude Carrière and dir. by Jean-Paul Carrère
• Photos of Harold and Maude Movie Locations As They Appear Today
• Guide to shoot locations

v • d • e Films directed by Hal Ashby 1970s The Landlord (1970) · Harold and Maude (1971) · The Last Detail (1973) · Shampoo (1975) · Bound for Glory (1976) · Coming Home (1978) · Being There (1979) 1980s Second-Hand Hearts (1981) · Lookin' to Get Out (1982) · The Slugger's Wife (1985) · 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) Documentaries Let's Spend the Night Together (1983) · Solo Trans (1984)