Harold and Maude (15.)
Directed by Hal Ashby. 1971.
Starring Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles, G.Wood and Charles Tyner. 91 mins
Available to buy on blu-ray from Eureka! in their Masters of Cinema series from 14th May.
1971 was a traumatic time for the States: post-sixties disillusionment, hardening of the counter culture, racial strife, Vietnam, all that stuff. Things were so bad that Paramount could turn out a film like Harold and Maude and see it find a cult audience. After an initially hostile reception from critics and audiences the film has been steadily picking up admirers ever since. Seen today, it looks as implacably a product of it times as footage of Patty Hearst doing a bank job with Symbionese Liberation Army.
The things that are supposed to repel people about Harold and Maude are that it is about a relationship between a young boy and a 79 year old woman; or its bleak comic sensibility which has Harold stage various fake suicides to shock his mother. But what really got me was how soppily indulgent and self pitying it all was.
Harold loves death and aside from his mock suicide japes he spends his days going to funerals. So far, so Emo but because his mother is both extremely wealthy and extremely uncaring he becomes some kind of totem for disillusioned youth, and his antics a rejection of her shallow materialism. Granted, Mrs Chasen (Vivian Pickles) is unfeeling and shallow but the film doesn't play fair. The film opens with Harold hanging himself and her entering and blithely carrying on with a phone call as he dangles from the roof. It repeats this gag with a number of other suicide scenes. Of course, every time she doesn't react to these it is presented as an expression of cruel authority's indifference to the torments of youth. But mightn't they also be a perfectly reasonable coping mechanism given the torment he puts her through. Only on one occasion does she get upset, after Harold has faked slashing his wrists in a bathtub and plastered the room with blood, and you can see what she has had to endure. He may be a monster of her own creation, but he is still a monster.
Maude on the other hand is just a little old ball of wacky. She may have a taste for Buddhist philosophy but her free spirited baiting of authority and social norms – stealing cars, posing nude for sculptors – is really just the lazy crazy old folk archetype. She is just a small step away from being Helen Hayes in Herbie Rides Again. (Screenwriter Colin Higgins' other major credits are mainstream, Hollywood star vehicles like Nine To Five, Silver Streak and Foul Play.) If Maude even vaguely resembled a real life old person she wouldn't get anywhere near the screen.
That the film still has a following forty years on is down to the talent involved. While Ruth Gordon does wonders covering up the contrivances and giving some depth and truth to Maude, Bud Cort's Harold is like a solo Addams Family and his unique physical attributes – so child like, so withdrawn and so ill-at-ease with his body – are probably crucial to the film's longevity. Director Hal Ashby also excels – in only is second film he basically creates the blue print for Wes Anderson's early films.
Extras.
40 Page with interviews with Hal Ashby, screenwriter Colin Higgins and a profile of Ruth Gordon.
Commentary by Ashby biographer Nick Dawson and producer Charles B. Mulvehill.
Discussion of the film with critic David Cairns
Directed by Hal Ashby. 1971.
Starring Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles, G.Wood and Charles Tyner. 91 mins
Available to buy on blu-ray from Eureka! in their Masters of Cinema series from 14th May.
1971 was a traumatic time for the States: post-sixties disillusionment, hardening of the counter culture, racial strife, Vietnam, all that stuff. Things were so bad that Paramount could turn out a film like Harold and Maude and see it find a cult audience. After an initially hostile reception from critics and audiences the film has been steadily picking up admirers ever since. Seen today, it looks as implacably a product of it times as footage of Patty Hearst doing a bank job with Symbionese Liberation Army.
The things that are supposed to repel people about Harold and Maude are that it is about a relationship between a young boy and a 79 year old woman; or its bleak comic sensibility which has Harold stage various fake suicides to shock his mother. But what really got me was how soppily indulgent and self pitying it all was.
Harold loves death and aside from his mock suicide japes he spends his days going to funerals. So far, so Emo but because his mother is both extremely wealthy and extremely uncaring he becomes some kind of totem for disillusioned youth, and his antics a rejection of her shallow materialism. Granted, Mrs Chasen (Vivian Pickles) is unfeeling and shallow but the film doesn't play fair. The film opens with Harold hanging himself and her entering and blithely carrying on with a phone call as he dangles from the roof. It repeats this gag with a number of other suicide scenes. Of course, every time she doesn't react to these it is presented as an expression of cruel authority's indifference to the torments of youth. But mightn't they also be a perfectly reasonable coping mechanism given the torment he puts her through. Only on one occasion does she get upset, after Harold has faked slashing his wrists in a bathtub and plastered the room with blood, and you can see what she has had to endure. He may be a monster of her own creation, but he is still a monster.
Maude on the other hand is just a little old ball of wacky. She may have a taste for Buddhist philosophy but her free spirited baiting of authority and social norms – stealing cars, posing nude for sculptors – is really just the lazy crazy old folk archetype. She is just a small step away from being Helen Hayes in Herbie Rides Again. (Screenwriter Colin Higgins' other major credits are mainstream, Hollywood star vehicles like Nine To Five, Silver Streak and Foul Play.) If Maude even vaguely resembled a real life old person she wouldn't get anywhere near the screen.
That the film still has a following forty years on is down to the talent involved. While Ruth Gordon does wonders covering up the contrivances and giving some depth and truth to Maude, Bud Cort's Harold is like a solo Addams Family and his unique physical attributes – so child like, so withdrawn and so ill-at-ease with his body – are probably crucial to the film's longevity. Director Hal Ashby also excels – in only is second film he basically creates the blue print for Wes Anderson's early films.
Extras.
40 Page with interviews with Hal Ashby, screenwriter Colin Higgins and a profile of Ruth Gordon.
Commentary by Ashby biographer Nick Dawson and producer Charles B. Mulvehill.
Discussion of the film with critic David Cairns
