 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
I couldn't help thinking of the recent movie "Driving Lessons," while I was watching the 1971 film "Harold and Maude." In "Driving Lessons" a teenager played by Rupert Grint (Ron of the "Harry Potter" films) befriends an eccentric woman who is old enough to be his grandmother. This old woman then teaches the young man important life lessons (the whole "carpe diem" sort of thing). In "Harold and Maude," a rich 19-20-year old named Harold, befriends an eccentric 79-year-old woman named Maude, who then teaches him important life lessons. In both films, the young man and the old woman like each other very much. The difference is "Harold and Maude" takes the idea to its logical extreme-- the young man actually falls in love with the 79-year-old woman. And it's not familial love, but romantic, sexual love. The result is a darkly funny, quirky film that has since become a cult classic. If there ever was a movie that captures the rebellious and eclectic spirit of 70's cinema, this is it.
Harold is a wealthy young American man, old enough to be drafted in the Vietnam War, who seems to be emotionally crippled by high-class ennui and is morbidly obsessed with death. A hearse is his vehicle of choice. He also enjoys repeatedly faking his own death, whether by hanging or drowning or hari kari, and having his vacuous, WASPy mother stumble upon the scene. She's used to it, however - when he's floating motionless on the surface of the pool, she just ignores him and dives right in.
Harold is played by Bud Cort, whose last credit to my memory is "The Bond Company Stooge" in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." The young Cort has a disconcerting presence in "Harold and Maude." His complexion is noticeably pale and his voice is incongruously low and mature compared to his looks. Cort has an interesting way of carrying himself with a reserved, knowing irony, but it's really only a fragile facade. In other scenes with Harold's mother, Cort seems to recoil, quite appropriately, in wide-eyed, abject horror.
Harold also likes to attend the funerals of strangers. He soon notices another person that visits nearly every burial and wake that he does. This person is Maude, a 79-year-old woman ("I look young for my age") who goes to funerals for a very different reason than Harold. Her interest stems from a reverence for life, in contrast to Harold's morbid obsession. One of her other favorite activities is "watching things grow" and liberating small, dying trees from the stifling smog of cities. To term Maude a free spirit would not only be a cliché but a tremendous understatement. Her attitude is anarchic, and when Harold first meets her, she's committing a crime -- if I said what crime I'd spoil the gag. In a later sequence, she commits about six offenses at once that I could count. But these offenses are pretty benign and she certainly knows how to have fun. "Do you know how to sing and dance?" she asks Harold at one point. He responds with a few "um's" and "uh's." Through a series of coincidences and misadventures, Harold and Maude begin to spend time together. Meanwhile Harold's mother tries to marry him off through a series of Internet dates. You'll have to see for yourself how Harold handles his developing romantic love for Maude.
Maude is played by Ruth Gordon, who was actually 75 when the film was made. Gordon does look young for her age and skillfully brings an enthusiasm and vivacity to Maude that doesn't go too over the top. The true accomplishment of Cort and Gordon is that they are able to suggest a depth of feeling and history in their characters that saves them from being "wacky" caricatures. In addition to that, I appreciate the fact that the script eventually reveals in some way or another the crucial events that formed their personalities. These people aren't weird for weirdness' sake, but have been wounded in life and cope with it in unusual ways. The film does not hedge its bets on a potentially shocking premise, but actually supports that premise with believable, interesting characters that have personal histories.
This film was made in 1971, near the beginning of what has been termed the "New Hollywood" movement. Just a few years prior, in 1968, "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" came out, which where cinematic breakthroughs at the time, especially in their depictions of sex and violence, respectively. Before this period, due to a stringent censorship code, content in Hollywood films were quite conservative. High profile lawsuits, the competition of television, and the increasingly risqué offerings from foreign countries all contributed to the development of a new type of film that started coming out in the late sixties and dominated much of the seventies. Besides it's taboo sexual themes, "Harold and Maude" particularly owes a debt to "The Graduate" with its use of pop songs. "The Graduate" was actually one of the first films to use contemporary pop, in this case by Simon and Garfunkel, to score a film. "Harold and Maude" is filled with classic Cat Stevens songs, one of which actually becomes integral to the narrative.
If you happen to notice a man with a ridiculously long beard in "Harold and Maude," that would be the director Hal Ashby making a cameo. Hal Ashby is not necessarily a famous filmmaker, but his output in the seventies included many seminal films like the sexually audacious "Shampoo," with Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn, and "Coming Home," about a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran played by Jon Voight. Prevalent issues like in those films, like the sexual revolution and Vietnam, are explicitly addressed through comedy in "Harold and Maude" as well. It's worth mentioning that Harold's uncle, a bloodthirsty military man who believes we should start fighting the Germans again because they already gave us two "good wars," gets what is perhaps the biggest laugh in the picture, which I won't ruin here. We've been showing quite a lot of darker comedies at Film Underground, but this is the first from the 1970's, and the film is a great encapsulation of the spirit of American cinema at the time. It's wonderful to see a film like this or "Solo con tu pareja," that takes a sensational premise and executes it with such humor, wit, and love.
Join us for a free screening of "Harold and Maude" on Thursday, April 17th, at 7:00pm in the MUB Theatre I.
Be Well, FU
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