Harold and Maude- film review by Izzy Sieveking

(contains references to suicide, so please read with care)

It feels bittersweet to review Harold and Maude (1971), a film about seizing all the joy in life, after the passing of the then 20-something Bud Cort in February. Cast in prominent hits by Rob Altman (M.A.S.H and Brewster McCloud, both 1970), the budding character actor soon grabbed the attention of fellow New Hollywood director Hal Ashby, whose filmography epitomized the counterculture of the 1960's and 70's. Folk musician Cat Stevens' soundtrack, an early example of its kind, is synonymous with the film's message of free love and earthliness. At 56, this surprisingly fresh black comedy-romance has far surpassed its poor beginnings at the box office, securing a place in the National Film Registry (films deemed worthy of preservation) in 1997. A gentle tale of an elderly woman befriending a solitary drifter, why the controversy, given the explicit content of films since? Or was Harold and Maude just waiting to find a more open audience, like ours?

As age-gaps and unlikely pairings go, Harold and Maude is the original Liquorice Pizza (2021), inspiration of the teacher/student romance that could never be in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998). Nominated for the BAFTA's Most Promising Newcomer in 1973, Cort is the faux-suicidal Harold, the visual prototype of goth children everywhere- from Wednesday in Barry Sonnenfeld's 1991 The Adams Family remake to Victor in our upcoming Halloween screening, The Corpse Bride. Ghostly pale and almost mute, Harold's only form of self-expression is staging suicide in the presence of his disinterested, social-climbing mother (Vivian Pickles in her first non-theatre role). Meeting with therapists, a new car- to replace the hearse- and Mrs. Chasen's devotion in finding Harold a bride does little to alleviate his strange habit. Bizarrely, it wasn't this graphic concept that shocked audiences but the taboo of a relationship between a much, much older woman than Mike Nichols even dared in 1967's The Graduate. Among the mourners at a stranger's funeral, Harold finally meets another person fascinated not by death but renewal, 79-year-old Maude (acclaimed actress Ruth Gordon, proving that industry success needn't come to an end by something as minor as age). Like a moth to flame, Maude makes Harold her friend and, over the course of a week of hilarious disregard for the law, unexpected lover.

There's so much to commend this film on, but I'll start with how its background isn't too far from the story of one generation helping another. Screenwriter Cal Higgins (who went on to pen 1980's Dolly Parton starring, workplace equality comedy 9-5) had turned this small university project into a play, running consecutively in Paris for three years. Back in the States, the family of a producer he cleaned for insisted that he send the script off to be considered for a feature adaptation. That's another interesting aspect- Harold and Maude is firmly in the New Hollywood style but is studio produced. Deemed too inexperienced to direct a film himself, Ashby was brought in, although contemporary screenwriter Larry Karaszewski sees the film as "100% Higgin's baby" (Variety, 2021- the same publication that slaughtered Harold and Maude upon its original 1971 release). Even though Higgins impressed Paramount Executive Peter Bart, who could "buy anything [I] wanted", Harold and Maude suffered a poor marketing campaign and inevitable comparison to the planned Christmas release of Coppola's The Godfather (1972). Still, the non- conformist message resonated with a "new generation of college students" who watched the film across hundreds of American theatres a decade later, shifting it into cult status (New York Times, 1983). Emma Madden's 50-year retrospective attributes the late cult revival to its "satire of the American bourgeoisie and all its institutions" (BBC, 2021). Harold and Maude unashamedly pokes fun at the church through Harold's repressed priest, the army via his uncle's resolute patriotism (despite losing an arm) and even the oft thrown around psychoanalytical theory of the Oedipus complex in the stunted relationship he has with his mother. By befriending and then sleeping with Maude, he rejects all of these ideals. No wonder the film was controversial.

And yet Harold and Maude is the one of the most innovative, pure of heart and accessible films from America of this date. Cinematographer John Alonzo knew he was up against the continuity editing of Hollywood, so even the most poignant moments fit easily into the narrative order. Breaking the fourth wall is commonplace, inviting us to share in Harold's rebellion as he grins knowingly at the camera. The cut to a demolition site when Maude asks what else he does 'for fun' is perfectly, comically timed. Looking at daisies up close, with the reflective Maude comparing the flowers to how people allow themselves to be treated indifferently, a wide shot pulls away to place them inside a mass cemetery of white graves- such is the legacy of war on beauty and individualism. Through this, it's as if Ashby/Higgins are validating the post-war dissent of American people, when characters like Ms. Chasen and others of her kind can't fathom the lives people like Maude represent instead. In the first of his collaborations with Ashby, production designer Michael D. Haller speaks to Maude's chipper outlook to life through the mise-en- scene, from her bright yellow umbrella; the bohemian ex-railway carriage where she lives and even incidental light filtering through the trees as the couple salvage a withering tree. Scouring LA for locations, the wave-crashed hills of California better served the purpose for Maude's eccentric driving and the cinematic takes of Harold's hearse traversing nostalgically empty roads. So whimsical and carefree are these visual accents that the tragedy of the film is as inobtrusive as the natural cycle of life. I distinctly remembered the briefest close-up to a concentration camp tattoo on Maude's arm, quickly returning to the idyllic sunset welcoming her 80th birthday, when my brother showed me the movie 14 years ago. Revisiting the film, it's Harold's tentative experiences- his quietly singing along to Cat Steven's iconic 'If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out'; the sunflower birthday decorations he makes for Maude's party, the way his face changes from adoration to horror when a realization sinks in- that feels more affecting than before.

"Everyone has the right to make an ass of themselves". If there's one philosophy of Maude's we should adopt, it's this. Or, as she tells the tearful Harold, "go love some more". A cult classic, Harold and Maude is also the first film we decided to program as a group. It was a delight to write about in this new vicinity, knowing that some of you might have been there in the 70's and others are lucky enough to see it first- hand with us.

References
Saperstein, Pat, 2021. 'Harold and Maude at 50: An Oral History of How a 'Harrowing' Flop Became a
Beloved Cult Classic'. Variety.
Madden, Emma, 2021. 'Harold and Maude: The film that broke several taboos'. BBC Culture.