Hard to believe the world once hated Harold And Maude
Hal Ashby's 1971 romance inspired a whole new branch of rom-com filmmaking
Image: Graphic: Libby McGuire Film Features Harold and Maude
Screenshot: Harold And Maude
The family tree of romantic comedy creators is tall and lush. At the top sit William Shakespeare and Jane Austen as the great-great-grandparents of the genre. Their descendants include Howard Hawks’ screwball comedies, Billy Wilder’s humanist romances, and John Hughes’ empathetic teen love stories. In the ’90s, Nora Ephron launched a new branch thick enough to be its own tree, from which followed everything from Richard Curtis’ British ensemble comedies to Nancy Meyers’ affluent trifles. Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of the tree, on his own eccentrically twisted branch, is Hal Ashby, the bearded bohemian who gave birth to a whole new style of eccentric, oddball romance that’s still alive and well today.
What Ephron did for mainstream romantic comedies with When Harry Met Sally, Ashby did for quirky arthouse romances with Harold And Maude, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next month. The DNA of Ashby’s life-affirming, opposites-attract love story lives on in Garden State, Elizabethtown, (500) Days Of Summer, Silver Linings Playbook, and many more—not to mention Wes Anderson’s entire oeuvre.
In fact, rewatching Harold And Maude today, it almost feels like a parody of the films it inspired, one that exaggerates its aimless male protagonist into death-obsessed 19-year-old Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) and its “manic pixie dream girl” into 79-year-old anarchic free spirit Dame Marjorie “Maude” Chardin (Ruth Gordon). With its transgressive May/December romance, Harold And Maude certainly practices what it preaches in terms of rejecting conventionality and embracing the unique. And it’s that boldness that makes the beloved film feel just as innovative and alive today as it did when it premiered 50 years ago.
Harold And Maude’s influence wasn’t immediate. It was a critical and commercial flop when it first debuted. Australian-American screenwriter Colin Higgins dreamed up the story at the height of the free love era, as his MFA Thesis at UCLA Film School. But by the time the movie was actually shot and released, the glory days of the counterculture movement of the 1960s were already starting to curdle in a way that made it feel out of step with mainstream tastes. Variety’s scathing review opened with the line, “Harold And Maude has all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage.”
College students, however, embraced its sensitive portrait of alienation. The film found a second life in regular rotation at midnight screenings and on college campuses. Over the past five decades, it’s grown from cult favorite to canonized classic. Jason Schwartzman once described Harold And Maude as, “The first time that movies made me feel inside the way records did.”
As with so many of the quirky indies it would go on to inspire, however, the film’s deadpan tweeness is something of an acquired taste. You’re either a Harold And Maude person or you’re not. And a lot of that boils down to whether you find Maude annoying or endearing. The vivacious, burgeoning octogenarian brings a bright yellow umbrella to funerals, poses in the nude for her ice sculptor friend, and swipes cars whenever she needs a new mode of transportation, all while encouraging the rest of the world to embrace her carpe diem attitude too. In the most straightforward reading, Harold represents death while Maude represents life. The winking irony, of course, is that it’s an aging old woman who teaches a fresh-faced young adult a thing or two about really living.
Yet Harold And Maude strikes me, more than anything, as a movie about control. Harold’s macabre sensibilities stem less from some authentic part of who he is and more from a self-conscious desire to stand apart from other people in a way that gives him a sense of power over them. Each time Harold stages an elaborate fake suicide in front of his blasé aristocratic mother (Vivian Pickles), it’s an attempt to control her emotional reaction. He wants to recreate a moment in his youth where she briefly thought he actually had died and responded with a rare burst of genuine emotion. As Harold sees it, if he provokes other people first or frightens them away entirely, he never has to make himself vulnerable to them—he never has to give up his sense of control.
Key to that reading is the moment Harold turns directly to the camera with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face after scaring off a date his mom arranged for him. It was an improvisation from Cort, whose pitch-perfect performance is so essential to making Harold And Maude work. While Gordon excels at deepening the well-worn archetype of the “kooky old lady,” Cort has the even trickier task of bringing a much more unusual character to life in a three dimensional way. In the actor’s hands, Harold’s contradictions feel like more than just put-on eccentricities. He’s a young man who’s at once proudly fearless and deeply afraid.
It’s why Harold doesn’t initially see Maude as a kindred spirit. In fact, when she first tries to chat to him at a stranger’s funeral, Harold seems slightly terrified. Provocative as he may be, the young man limits his pranks to the safe confines of his home. Maude, meanwhile, brings her antics into the unpredictable real world, whether she’s “rescuing” an injured tree or stealing a policeman’s motorcycle. From the moment she cheerfully offers Harold a piece of licorice mid-funeral service, it’s clear that she’s someone he can’t scare away with his usual tactics. For once, Harold isn’t in the driver’s seat.
Maude, however, understands there’s a difference between control and choice. Whereas Harold’s cynical outlook is born out of frustration with his life of privilege, Maude’s philosophy is hard earned. She grew up in turn-of-the-century Austria, where she dreamed of marrying a handsome solider but fell for a bookish university doctor instead. She speaks of picket lines, rallies, and political meetings where she was dragged off by police for fighting for justice. A quick shot of a concentration camp tattoo on her arm suggests Maude survived the most hellish experience imaginable—one where her entire sense of control was violently stripped away from her. In that context, her way of living is a radical act. “[I’m] still fighting for the big issues,” she explains to Harold. “But now in my small, individual way.”
Though Harold And Maude satirizes the military industrial complex via Harold’s war-loving uncle (Charles Tyner), Ashby’s overall aim is much more broadly humanistic. Maude operates as a kind of mutual aid for the soul, inspiring others while seeking inspiration from them as well. In the film’s most moving sequence, Harold notes that if he were a flower he’d probably just be a daisy lost in a field of identical blossoms. But Maude encourages him to see that each daisy is actually unique in its own special way, whether smaller, fatter, bent, or broken. So much of the world’s sorrow comes from the way people allow their unique individuality to be subsumed into the crowd, she explains, as Ashby’s camera zooms back to reveal that Harold and Maude are sitting in a cemetery lined with identical white tombstones. It’s a breathtaking image, both tragic and poignant: a tribute to the individual lives lost to the mass stats of war at the height of the conflict in Vietnam.
Yet Maude understands better than most that death is also part of what gives life meaning. That’s why her ultimate decision to end her life on her 80th birthday still fits within her effervescent worldview. In an act of both rebellion and acceptance, Maude reclaims the choice that was nearly robbed from her during the Holocaust. And in doing so, she leaves Harold with one last lesson: Loss and sorrow are a part of life. To try to manage your existence to avoid them just means you’re not really living and growing. When Harold tries to get Maude to stay by pleading that he loves her, she simply responds, “Oh Harold, that’s wonderful. Go and love some more.”
In the end, Harold’s arc isn’t just about learning to embrace life, it’s specifically about learning to open himself up to true vulnerability and the risk of pain. He has to accept that falling in love means letting someone else impact him in ways he can’t control. It’s the central idea of most romantic comedies, quirky or conventional. Harold And Maude just exaggerates it to deadpan proportions. It’s like a more transgressive but also more openhearted riff on The Graduate, with Simon & Garfunkel’s melancholy soundtrack replaced by the more joyous tunes of Cat Stevens. If The Graduate is summed up by the plaintive chords of “The Sound Of Silence,” Harold And Maude finds its anthem in “If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out”—a song that celebrates choice and freedom over conformity and control.
From its earliest days, the cornerstone of the romantic comedy genre has always been the way it heightens real-world experiences to poetic proportions. What makes Harold And Maude so affecting (and so funny) is that it takes that idea to its logical extreme. It offers a blend of edginess and earnestness that’s just as intoxicating today as it was 50 years ago. “Don’t ever stop searching it,” Ashby once said of his editing process. “Make your film so goddamned good that you see something in it all the time.” With Harold And Maude, he crafted an emotionally layered love story that people never wanted to stop watching—and that rom-com filmmakers never stopped emulating.
Next time: Even without any romance, Together Together is the best rom-com of 2021.
128 Comments
Truly one of the best movies of all time. I had no idea it was so widely panned initially.
It might not have helped that to some it felt slightly disjointed. It isn’t just the subject matter, but the fact that the film had a good 30 minutes excised. So much so that Bud Cort essentially refused to promote the film, since it wasn’t a situation in which director Hal Ashby got final cut. Cort felt that Paramount did a real hatchet job on the movie. And the footage that was edited has since been lost.
It’s a movie that maybe twenty students in every high school will completely adore and the other thousand will think it’s too weird or stupid. Twenty from every high school every year since (especially in the VHS age) add up to an eventual huge following but it takes some time.
I truly lost some respect for Wes Anderson after seeing Harold and Maude. A film which, quite frankly, he’s never really lived up to.
Isn’t “May-December” romance kind of a weird term though? I know it means a romance where one person is elderly (December) and a younger person (May), but if you think about it, wouldn’t it be a a romance between an elderly person and a nearly middle-aged one given that May is near mid-year. In the case of this movie, I think it’s more a February-December romance.
There was a Discworld book where a character said that in the riddle “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”, the math doesn’t work out as far as the person’s age goes if you measure it by time of day.
Discworld huh? Try classical mythology.
I’m sure you can find it on the intraweb if you can pull yourself away from Cowboy Beep-boop and Twitter for a second.
The Discworld bit is specifically riffing off of the classical mythology of the Riddle of the Sphinx. Not sure why you equate reading some entertaining fantasy satire with watching anime or doomscrolling social media.
I feel super sad for you, since you have cut yourself off from such delightful experiences.
I don’t think about you at all
The “May” part is because it’s spring. New growth, beauty, youth. February would be like saying a “winter and winter” romance. It’s about the seasons not the length of days. From a time when society was agricultural and seasons mattered far more.
Came here to say exactly this. Also, if you do want to go by the calendar, keep in mind that the year used to start in mid-March, so May would imply that someone is young, but still an adult.
Well it’s a bit of an ageist term by definition so I think December refers to late 40s’ or 50’s. It doesn’t incorporate the possibility of older people dating, if it did that would through the scale of everything off and you’d be correct that May would be older.
Antifa love story perfection.
Well, you’ve piqued my interest…what does that mean?
I guess Maude was anti-fascist. I imagine most concentration camp survivors are not pro-fascist.
I mean…yeah I get that but Antifa Love Story Perfection sounds…odd. Like I don’t think of the film in terms of being anti-fascism (although clearly they do mock that with Harold’s uncle and how excited he gets at blood and murder) as much as anti-conformity.
Fascism is pretty conformist, though. It’s often explicitly shaped around the rejection of an “other” perceived to be corrupting society.
Seems like a safe bet.
It doesn’t mean anything – right wing trolls have abandoned the idea that words have actual meanings, but are just symbols of provocation.
Left wing trolls have done the same. For example, “woman”.
Antifa is probably the best example of this, because the implication is that Antifa are the REAL fascists and they’re cleverly hiding it by literally naming their “organization” as the opposite of what they are. But at the same time that’s exactly what people who talk about antifa are doing, since they’re supporting fascist ideologies to fight antifa… in a way that would make them an-antifa… and just like that we’re way down the rabbit hole of not thinking about what any of this really means. Oh, and also even though I hate to bring up such an obvious cliche like this but stripping language of all meaning was one of the key points in 1984. everyone remembers the surveillance, torture, etc. But the concept of eliminating political dissent by literally removing the means to express political dissent is quite a bit scarier to me.
Wasn’t that literally Winston Smith’s job description?
Winston edited old news articles so they would line up with the current “correct” history.
Although the term “anti-fascism” has a lot of unpleasant historical baggage that people may not get if they they think “people who fought fascists had to be good!”. The literal anti-fascists of the Berlin street battles were members of the German Communist Party who wanted to overthrow the democratic Weimar Republic and establish a Stalinist dictatorship and eventually got their chance in East Germany after the war. And the Berlin Wall, which existed to keep East Germans from escaping their “worker’s paradise”, was officially the “Anti-fascist protection barrier” (the propaganda claimed it was to keep the West out who were seen as still fascist). A far more admirable organization that I wish the modern “antifa” would have named themselves after was the “Iron Front”, who fought both Nazis and Communists and tried (but failed) to save democracy in Germany before the Nazi takeover.
Are you just advertising your band here?
“Antifa love story perfection.”Casablanca?
I was roughly Harold’s age when first seeing this. The film, and its soundtrack, became instant faves of mine. I could relate to the angst, and the need for darker feelings to be acknowledged and discussed without shame. But it was also the right time for me to hear Maude’s advice (and Cat Stevens’) on how to step out of the gloom.
Great write-up of a film I’ve loved for decades (my avatar might give that away). I’m really glad you mentioned Harold’s need not just to discover how to L-I-V-E LIVE!, but also learn about pain and that loss and pain are okay (also, is he still dealing with trauma around his father’s death?). It’s something that’s both obvious in the film, but that the film also shroud’s pretty effectively with its joyousness.A lot of the reviews at the time weren’t just negative, but incredibly sexist and ageist. It seems to have been unfathomable to the likes of Vincent Canby that such a relationship would be possible, especially when it takes its sexual turn – Ebert alludes to their relationship as “necrophilia.” A lot of the contemporary reviews read like they could have been written by the film’s priest.But I love that one of Maude’s goals in the film is to get laid one last time – and by a young dude – which is awesome.
Gods Ebert could be a real asshole sometimes. Still read all his reviews and watch his show (which was never the same after Siskel) constantly. Even though I was like 10 when I started.
Or after himself! For a brief time after he lost the ability to speak Ebert had decided that a pair of younger critics should run his show in 2011 — one of whom was this site’s (well, I know he isn’t full time anymore, but still) Ignatiy Vishnevetsky! Seriously, I thought he and Christy Lemire did a pretty decent job — in particular I thought it was nice updating of the format that they included a section on the show called “Hot ‘n’ Now” about films the audience could watch by streaming (a relatively new concept in 2011).
Actually Ebert permanently lost the ability to speak after his second bout of cancer, and later could not eat or drink either. He used a computerized voice at some point. It seemed to mellow him some, but he definitely could be a real asshole about some things.
It’s funny seeing how grossed out he was by The Thing. I’m like Roger, you sweet summer child, there are movies out there (even in ‘82!) that make The Thing look like Pete’s Dragon. Isn’t it your job to watch them?
To be fair, Pete’s Dragon is kind of terrifying.
I somehow doubt he ever gave a thumbs up to Cannibal Holocaust.
Aliens was another movie that he (while admiring its production and giving it a good score over all) Ebert mentions that he couldn’t really enjoy because of all the violence. Even in 1986, it was hardly that violent of a movie!
The guy that wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has a problem with the violence in Aliens!
Ebert was a bitch. Siskel was constantly perplexed by Ebert’s reaction to things.
He was pretty awful a lot of the time.
No he wasn’t. Stop talking
I agree with Ebert as much as anyone, and that’s especially true of movies that aren’t generally regarded as classics. And he’s the rare critic who takes genre films seriously.
Ebert taught a whole generation to appreciate genre movies
Yeah, very smug when he didn’t like something. Unlike some of the ‘70s guys, I think his views actually got more expansive as he aged and more nuanced in his thinking, and his reviews became more open to what the filmmakers might be trying.
It might if it were bigger than an 1/8 of an inch.
I have no idea what Vincent Canby looked like, but reading his reviews always makes me picture a slightly rotund elderly gentleman in waistcoat whose spectacles literally jump off his face at the sight of what These Young People are doing.
Ha ha, that’s funny because that’s how I’ve always pictured Bosley Crowther who preceded him at the Times. In the ‘70s, at least, Canby had some pretty good takes on some of the crazy stuff that came out of Hollywood and could be good on some of the weirder European stuff, too. H&M was not him at his best. I think the sex – even the thought of it – really triggered a lot of folks back then.
Between the off the beaten path locations and an introspective look at protest movements, it’s one of the most quintessentially Bay Area films ever made.Many of the better art house movie theaters in the Bay Area still have screenings of Harold and Maude from time to time.
I think this is the only movie I can think of so far that really stuck to filming exclusively in the Peninsula and East Bay. no obligatory mention of Stanford, no Golden Gate bridge shots ( love they used the least sexiest bridge in the Bay Area, the Dumbarton Bridge, instead). It made me think that come to think of it, has there been any movie that was shot on location in San Jose?!!? ( I’ve seen movies mention SJ, but its usually shot in Los Angeles or elsewhere). that Winchester horror film from a couple of years back just had a couple scenes of the mystery house but everything else was obviously a studio. Love Harold and Maude.
I’m often amazed by my own lack of familiarity with San Jose, the city of over a million people that’s less than two hours drive from my house.
Don’t get down on yourself about it; San Jose is really a place people “end up” because all the other places in the Bay Area are full. Nobody actually seeks it out as a destination.
Now that you mention it, the movie does go a bit out of its way to find wreckage and ruin in the beautiful Bay Area. Sutro Baths and the Emeryville mud flats come to mind. But we get redwoods and rolling green hills too.
I love this movie, I live close to the cemetery they filmed in, and I used to go fishing at Oyster Point when I was a kid, so it was cool to see those places in a movie.
You know this does feel very proto Wes Anderson, down to people dying in dry comedic ways. Wes Anderson meets the graduate is one hell of a combination.
And thus, Rushmore.
Harold begins talking to Maude at about 19 minutes and 20 seconds.
I would be remiss in my duty, if I did not tell you, that the idea of… intercourse – the fact of his firm, young… body… commingling with the… withered flesh… sagging breasts… and flabby b-b-buttocks… makes me want… to vomit.
A+++ Name/comment synergy
I do so hope people recognize the reference. 😀
Aren’t you bald and ugly?
Love this film and great write up Caroline. You nailed it.
The part that meant a lot to me when I first saw it was Harold explaining how when he dresses, he wants gray and to not be seen: to basically just disappear (despite the awesome fake death attempts) and I fully understood that. I saw this when I was 16 on a recommendation from the film nerd who worked at one of the greatest video stores in the history of mankind and as someone who felt ostracized and different, I fully got that.
Maude explaining to him the opposite and why to go for it in life…it meant a lot. I’d also gotten into The Replacements and Punk and so forth and it just was the right time for me to see this film .
“The part that meant a lot to me when I first saw it was Harold explaining how when he dresses, he wants gray and to not be seen: to basically just disappear (despite the awesome fake death attempts) and I fully understood that.”
I don’t know what that’s from but that is PERFECT.
It’s British comedian and professional awkward nerd spokesman David Mitchell on a game(-ish) show called Would I Lie to You?
Oh I know him! He’s the guy from Peep Show right? They look nothing alike but I always think he’s the guy from “Snuff Box” with Matthew Berry.
He legit seems pretty damn funny. I need to book some time to watch some of his work.
I can understand why people like it, but I don’t think that this movie is very good. It’s intimate and beautifully lit and it’s very much a teenager’s story as told by a teenager. It probably did invent a new kind of movie. Wes Anderson wouldn’t be the filmmaker he is today without it. But Maude basically talks in big, declarative clichés and isn’t much of a character. She may be directly responsible for inspiringRobin William’s worst films. Taking on the Vietnam war probably wasn’t as ballsy in 1971 as it would have been in say, 1966, but the film gives itself a lot of credit for that. The movie’s worst sin is obscuring Harold and Maude’s climactic kiss. If you’re going to go on about the power of unembarrassed fulfillment and love of life, I expect you to show me a real smooch. The movie dodges big time there.
It doesn’t. The original lead up to the love scene was longer, as was the actual romance between Harold and Maude. Film stills exist that clarify this, but it is rarely mentioned that the film was “severely” edited by the studio. The film’s original trailer includes scenes not seen in the actual movie as well.
Honestly, I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks. Has anybody ever tried to put together a “restored” cut of this one?
30 minutes of missing footage has been lost to history. Paramount studios probably destroyed it. I guess you could do a reframing with some photo stills, like what they did with Erich von Stroheim’s “Greed”, but that’s about it really. Then again, they could always test the waters with an overt remake.
Ah, that’s too bad. I think a remake’s one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, considering the place that the original holds in the hearts of a lot of film-goers, but I’d be interested in it just to see what kind of “2 Harold 2 Maude” internet jokes we could get out of it.
“Die Harold, With a Vengeance”
Oh, good one!
Neither Wes Anderson nor Belle & Sebastian could exist without Harold and Maude, so for that I am truly grateful for this movie.
That modded car is so sweet…
The world was right to give this the thumbs-down. Being responsible for Garden State and its ilk just makes it all the worse.
This is as unfair as holding the Beastie Boys culpable for nu-metal.
I blame Anthrax’s “I’m the Man” for that.
Can we blame “Walk This Way” and kill two birds with one stone?
No, that’s a collaboration between two bands.
I am tempted to dislike the film illogically, simply by virtue of the fact that Judd Apatow loves it SO MUCH.
“The DNA of Ashby’s life-affirming, opposites-attract love story lives on in Garden State, Elizabethtown, (500) Days Of Summer, Silver Linings Playbook, and many more”Ahhh, what?! I mean, the reductiveness of describing it by “opposites-attract” aside, what a terrible list of comparisons. I would have gone with LA Story or Punch Drunk Love in addition, at least
I’m trying to remember when I first saw Harold & Maude. It was probably the mid-80’s, and it seemed like it was pretty well beloved by then. My mom knew it & liked it, and she is very much not a midnight movie kind of person.
Anyway, loved it, have seen it multiple times since, and now I want to rewatch it.
When I was in my early ‘20s I had a girlfriend who was about 10 years older than me and this was her favorite movie.That didn’t end well.
My college roommate loved this movie and I- HATED it. I probably would be more open to it now. I have a hard time with joking about suicide. And I will admit to being ageist on occasion. Sometimes I get stuck on the premise and lose out on perfectly good art. Can’t watch Kimmy Schmidt. There are women that have been held hostage for years. What is funny about that? Tonya Harding is a criminal who hurt someone. Why should she get a movie? This current fad of serial killers getting their own documentaries and series. Why give them one more hour of sunlight? Sigh. I probably need to lighten up. Working on it. I watched “A Teacher” all the way through and it was really well done. The ending was great. I consider that a personal breakthrough of sorts. But Mary Kay Letourneau can go fuck herself. Even in death. She can eat shit. (slowly drags away soapbox in retreat)
Are you referring to the film or tv adaptation of A Teacher?
The newer Hulu TV one. I am enamored with Nick Robinson. So impressed with him in everything he does.
Definitely don’t read Helter Skelter or In Cold Blood. Or watch Goodfellas or Catch Me If You Can or any war movie based on real life events. (Spoiler alert: The guy that Schindler’s List was about started out as kind of a dick.)
“Tonya Harding is a criminal who hurt someone.”I’d revisit your judgment on this one. I don’t think Harding is completely above culpability, but she was a molestation and domestic abuse survivor with a manipulative shitbag of an estranged husband. The whole affair is just…sad.
You’re probably right. And I love Margot Robbie. But it makes me feel like Nancy Kerrigan gets a shrug and people forget she was a victim of a violent attack.
the move is called I, Tonya, not I, Nancy. It’s an artistic choice to center on Tonya but not Nancy. If someone wants to make a Kerrigan biopic, they can
I’m sorry, what? No one has forgotten Kerrigan was the victim of a violent attack.
What was done to Nancy Kerrigan was awful and I’m sure it was deeply traumatic, but it was a minor injury in the end, and Tonya Harding lost her entire career over it and has lived in the deepest pit of public shaming for decades. If there is any chance for restorative justice, surely Tonya Harding has been punished enough?
And there’s a decent chance she had nothing to do with the attack (the only real evidence that she did is that her shitbag husband said so, and well… shitbag).
Some people deal with horrifying subject matter with humor. Some people are interested in what makes serial killers tick. Different people like different shit
I think it’s important to realize that most victimizers start off as victims, and understanding that and maybe even sympathizing with them to an extent is not excusing their actions. As for Harold and Maude, I haven’t seen it for many years, and should probably give it another try, but, while I recognize what makes it great, it leaves me cold to some extent. I think it’s partially my discomfort with death and partially my refusal to romanticize things. And of course, I tend to find Harold and Maude’s behavior to be incredibly annoying and inconsiderate of others, but that’s just par for the course in movies from the 70’s.
There are 70s movies which feel a lot less self absorbed to me — on the subject of aging and engaging in life, Harry and Tonto seems so much better to me than Harold and Maude, for example.I think the big reveal of Maude’s tattoo is what finally left me feeling that Harold and Maude was more about cheap manipulation than any real connection or emotion, but all along the movie felt stagey, forced, and arm twisting than anything honest. It seemed like a long syccession of memes before memes even existed.
Five Easy Pieces also left me cold, but interestingly The Last Detail did not, so I’m not sure how much of what I dislike about Harold and Maude is due to Ashby.
Of course there are plenty of movies from the seventies that don’t glorify being a narcissistic dickhead, but it does seem to be a prevailing theme of the time. I haven’t seen Harry and Tonto, but I hear it’s pretty good. I haven’t seen Five Easy Pieces, either, but if Nicholson’s character behaves throughout the whole movie the way he behaves towards the waitress in the diner scene I just don’t know if I can handle it. I love The Last Detail. One of my all time favorites, but I don’t think I’ve seen much other Ashby besides that and Harold and Maude, which I don’t love, but seem to like a bit better than you do. Edit: Actually, I’ve actually also seen Shampoo, Bound for Glory and Being There, so I guess I have seen most of Ashby’s work. It seems pretty uniformly good.
The most important part of Five Easy Pieces’ diner scene comes after it ends, when one of Nicholson’s companions tells him she loved how he dealt with the waitress and he ruefully responds that, well, he never did get any food as a result. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell – he is frequently an asshole but the movie is crystal clear about how this gets him absolutely nowhere and only causes damage, and he’s also self-aware enough about his nature that the story becomes tragic rather than merely unpleasant.
That’s a pretty good message for a movie to have, but unfortunately, all that the culture seems to remember is that he’s asshole and he looks cool being an asshole. I guess movies about assholes are just like movies about war or drugs in that no matter how negative the message might be, just having it on film and done by charismatic and good-looking people makes it look awesome. Nice user-name and comment synergy, by the way.
In general, I just feel that this movie tried way, way too hard to be transgressive to have any real emotional impact. The faked suicides, the young man sleeping with the senior citizen (amplified by Bud Cort looking like he hadn’t hit puberty yet), the hearse—it’s all a bit much of a much. I might have liked this better if it had come after the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl wave, but as it is, it comes off as too much of a deliberate attempt to make a cult movie. (And, sorry, but “canonized classic” in what sense? Who canonized it?)
Maybe it was overhyped for me, but I was very underwhelmed by this movie. Right up through the end I was begging for someone to punch Harold in the face.I should’ve known better—this was the favorite film of everyone I knew who were also fans of The Get Up Kids. That’s a major red flag.
I have only seen this once, and decades ago, so I’m sure I’d see it differently now somehow, but my summary at the time was “You should be a unique free spirit, just like me. And if you’re not a unique free spirit, just like me, go fuck yourself.” Like I say, maybe it’s wrong, but that’s how I took it.
When Harold tries to get Maude to stay by pleading that he loves her, she simply responds, “Oh Harold, that’s wonderful. Go and love some more.”That line made me absolutely lose it the first time I saw this film (ugly crying; luckily I was alone at the moment), and just reading it now made me tear up. I am absolutely a Harold and Maude person.
Saw this movie at a repertory theater in the early Eighties with my sister. We cried buckets and we LOVED it. She had already seen it and knew I had to. As a morbid depressive weirdo, I felt Harold so hard. I regret to say I haven’t completely turned into a Maude, but it’s still a life goal.I do have to complain that Lubitsch isn’t in your romcom family tree. What’s it going to take to get Trouble In Paradise covered? Or any of his films?
I just watched To Be Or Not To Be a couple of nights ago. I guess that doesn’t focus on the romance enough to be considered a romantic comedy, but it’s an interesting look at a marriage that is both unfaithful and happy.
Design for Living ends with them agreeing to live as a threesome. Pre-code Hollywood was a different world.
To be clear, when I say the marriage in To Be or Not to Be is unfaithful I don’t mean they have an arrangement of some kind. Lombard is cheating on Benny (or at least considering it) and he’s not happy about it, but he also seems perfectly willing to move on from it. I haven’t seen Design for Living, but I have heard about it, and it does intrigue me. Is it actually any good?
It is. I’ve come late-ish in life to my appreciation of Frederic March, but he’s excellent. And the rivalry is very funny. Miriam Hopkins is one of my favorite pre-code actresses. It happens that Kay Francis is my absolute favorite, which is one of the reasons Trouble in Paradise is my favorite Lubitsch.
I like a lot of pre-code movies, but there are a few that move at a very awkward pace or where the humor just falls flat for me. Some of this is just cultural difference, of course, but it also seems like that early on not everyone had really figured out how to do talkies yet. I haven’t seen any pre-code Lubitsch, as far as I know, but I’ve heard nothing but good things As for March, I’m only familiar with him from Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Best Years of Our Lives. They’re both good, but the latter is one of my favorite movies of all time, and he’s great in it.
Here’s the nicest thing anyone said to me, and it was by someone who didn’t even like me.
Me: I want to be like Maude when I grow up.
She: I think you’re like Maude now!
But I ain’t never killing myself. Life is short enough without shortening it any further.
Yup. It’s strange that a film that seems to be saying “Old people’s lives can be just as fun and fulfilling as anyone else’s” also thinks it’s totally cool for a completely healthy person to kill herself because she’s hit eighty.
Both things can be true. In Maude’s case, she was doing something meaningful to her and the arc of her life. If she died in a way she wanted, taking control of her existence by ending it in a conscious, considered way that gave her satisfaction in her last moments, then that’s totally cool. It’s also sad, but “my body, my choice” includes choices that don’t please others.
And I could imagine that her choice is influenced by watching her cohort, and knowing people who didn’t get to make that choice. My grandmother’s last two years were hellish, and she had no way out because she no longer understood anything around her.
I ended up seeing this for the first time (rented, as it was the 80s) because someone told 19-year-old me that I looked just like Harold.
I can dig it. I went to see ‘Man From Snowy River’ because people kept telling me how much I looked like Sigrid Thornton.
I’m a youngish middle-aged man and I have a couple platonic friends who are women in their early 70s. To counterbalance, I want to go the other way and befriend (only!) some women in their early 20s. This is probably a bad idea!I saw the terrific Harold and Maude years ago, and I had no idea Maude was the Devil’s handmaid. Good for Harold!
Ruth Gordon had a hell of a career.
It’s harder for me to believe anyone writing for AV Club actually likes Harold and Maude. Seems like something too good and well known enough to not get their super snark treatment now.
This is one of those movies that’s sort of beyond a “favorite” and more just woven into my being. Saw it at the right time and will always love it. Great write up, you perfectly captured why.
Hard to believe the world once hated Harold And MaudeMy hatred seethes unabated.
I saw Harold and Maude many times back in the day [it was on the bill at revival theaters (‘member those) a LOT]. I always liked it, and then didn’t see it for decades. It came up on TCM a while back and — it holds up beautifully. And yes, Bud Cort is the movie’s secret weapon. Amazing work for such a young kid. Ruth Gordon is wonderful, but… you know, she’s a quirky old lady playing a quirky old lady.Having watched it so many times, I ended up with a different favorite Harold death scene each time. The self-immolation was great, but that deadpan look when he chops his hand off if pretty fun too.
There was a time in my early 20s when I was fairly depressed and watched this film obsessively every night for like a week straight as some sort of therapy. It’s absolutely one of my favorites and one that I try not to watch too often because of how much it meant to me then.
As a side-note, there was a film I saw recently called Deep End that seemed to share a number of similarities with Harold and Maude: shot/set in the early 70s, troubled young male protagonist, Cat Stevens soundtrack. It’s much much darker and ends on a very bleak note but worth watching.
I saw this in college with friends, had no idea what it was going in and I will never forget how horrified and baffled I was when the entire theater cheered at Harold’s first suicide performance. A very fond memory.
Each time Harold stages an elaborate fake suicide in front of his blasé aristocratic mother (Vivian Pickles), it’s an attempt to control her emotional reaction. He wants to recreate a moment in his youth where she briefly thought he actually had died and responded with a rare burst of genuine emotion.Ok, this confused me. Wasn’t Harold trying to get a real reaction from his mother because her response to thinking he was dead the first time was to fake being upset? I thought he described how she put on a big act, and pretended to be distressed about his death around other people. So, he kept setting up scenes to get back at her. He’d already figured out that she couldn’t care less if he died.
How I love this movie! Ruth Gordon has more joie de vivre in her little finger than most actors have in their whole bodies.Speaking of May-December romances, her husband Garson Kanin was once asked if the differences in their ages bothered him. (She was born in 1896 and he was born in 1912). He replied, “Oh, you mean because she’s so much younger than I am?”
Simon & Garfunkel >>> Cat Stevens
It is hard to believe that the world once “hated” Harold and Maude because it isn’t even remotely true: the reviews were, at worst, initially mixed.
I like Harold and Maude, but imagine the outcry here, if the genders were swapped: A very old holocaust survivor and an depressed and suicidal young girl find fun and meaning in live and have a relationship like the one in Harold & Maude.
I’m catching up on this series of articles. Love them all! Thanks for sharing about this movie. I’ve never seen it. Only heard about it in passing. I had no idea what it was. And now I can see where it fits in the bigger scope of rom-coms!