Harold and Maude

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Harold and Maude
IMDB 8.0/10 (13,197 votes) top 250: #250
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
Distributed by	Paramount
Release date(s)	December 20, 1971 (USA)
Running time	91 min.
Language	English
Budget	$1,200,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Harold and Maude is a movie directed by Hal Ashby in 1971. The film, featuring light humor, dark humor, and existentialist drama, centers around the exploits of a morbid young man -- Harold -- who drifts away from the life that his detached mother prescribes him as he falls in love with septuagenarian Maude.

The film is number 45 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Funniest Movies of all time[1], number 42 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies and on IMDB's list of the best 250 movies ever made. In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress [2]. It is particularly noteworthy as having an enormous and zealous cult following.

The film was a commercial failure when it was released although the critical reception was extremely positive. The screenplay upon which the film was based was written by Colin Higgins, and published as a novel [3] in 1971. The movie was shot in the San Francisco Bay Area. Harold and Maude was also a play on Broadway for some time.

The movie has given rise to two new words: "Harolding" (hanging around cemeteries) described by Douglas Coupland in "Harolding in West Vancouver" (1996); and "Maudism" or "Maudianism", the philosophy of living each day to the fullest.[4]. This may also have a link to the phonetically-identical philosophy of Modism.

The entire soundtrack for the movie is by Cat Stevens.

1 Summary
2 Themes
3 Cast
4 Crew
- 4.1 Music
- 4.2 Track listing
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Summary

The film first introduces us to Harold, an alienated young man from a wealthy family who lives in a large mansion with his domineering mother. Harold stages realistic mock-suicides. This has evidently been going on for so long that his mother takes no notice, other than when Harold causes a particular mess with his fake blood. For amusement, Harold attends funerals of people he doesn't know. At these he repeatedly sees Maude, a 79-year-old woman who befriends him. Maude is very much his opposite: a senior citizen, energetic, impulsive, and light-hearted. The two form an unlikely friendship.

[edit] Themes

Hal Ashby, the director of the film, was part of the San Francisco youth culture, and in this film, he posits the doomed youth of the alienated against the vital age of actually believing and caring in something like the Holocaust survivors had to do in order to survive, contrasting nihilism with purpose. Maude's past is revealed in a glimpse of the concentration camp ID number tattooed on her arm.

Harold is part of a society where he has no personal importance and existentially, therefore, he is without meaning. Maude, however, 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 difference of how one culture, Harold, is handling one meaningless war, while another has experienced and lived beyond another war that produced a crisis of meaning, the Holocaust.

Clearly a survivor, Maude is also a fabulist and a dreamer; seeing beauty all around her and believing in the innate goodness of the individual people (but neither the state nor the corporate structure).

[edit] Cast

Marjorie Chardin (Maude): Ruth Gordon
Harold Chasen: Bud Cort
Mrs. Chasen: Vivian Pickles
Glaucus: Cyril Cusack
Uncle Victor: Charles Tyner
Sunshine Doré: Ellen Geer
Priest: Eric Christmas
Psychiatrist: G. Wood
Candy Gulf: Judy Engles
Edith Phern: Shari Summers
Motorcycle Officer: Tom Skerritt (as M. Borman)

[edit] Crew

Cinematography by: John Alonzo

[edit] Music

The soundtrack is by Cat Stevens, and includes two songs, "Don't Be Shy" and "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out", which he composed specifically for the movie and which were unavailable for over a decade on vinyl or cassette (they were later released on the compact disc Footsteps in the Dark). No official soundtrack for Harold and Maude was released in the US, though a vinyl LP soundtrack was released in Japan.

[edit] Track listing

These songs are in the order in which they appear in the movie.

"Don't Be Shy"
"On The Road To Find Out"
"I Wish, I Wish"
"Miles From Nowhere"
"Tea For The Tillerman"
"I Think I See The Light"
"Where Do The Children Play?"
"If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out"
"Trouble"

[edit] Trivia

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Harold buys his 1959 Cadillac Hearse from San Carlos Auto Wreckers. It is still owned in the bay area by a hearse enthusiast and still has the same license plate it had in the film.
Maude steals the Mustang in front of the San Mateo County Courthouse.
The expansive cemetery is the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.
The motorcycle police officer pulls Maude over on the Old Dumbarton Bridge causeway.
Harold and his uncle encounter Maude at the ruins of the Sutro Baths.
The film My First Mister, directed by Christine Lahti, is thematically similar, with Albert Brooks and Leelee Sobieski standing in for Gordon and Cort.
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.
This movie is referenced in the song "A New Friend", which appears on The Good Life's album Album of the Year.
Among the cult followers of Harold and Maude are Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly, who pay extensive tribute to the film in There's Something About Mary.
The film is mentioned in the novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.
The freeze frame of the Jaguar hearse in midair in the final sequence is the result of a happy accident. The single camera capturing the action did not start filming until well after the car had careened off the cliff, and since only one hearse had been prepared for the film, it was impossible to reshoot the shot.