Harold and Maude ***** (1971, Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles) – Classic Movie Review 1077

Director Hal Ashby’s 1971 adorable oddball black comedy has deservedly proved an enduring favourite.

Bud Cort stars as Harold, a rich and appealing but self-destructive and needy young weirdo who is obsessed with death. Strange boy that he is, his hobbies are attending funerals, watching buildings being demolished, visiting junkyards and faking suicides, as well as having sessions with his psychologist.

Then, at a funeral, Harold meets Ruth Gordon’s near-octogenarian free-spirited hippy Maude – the very same Ruth Gordon who is so menacing in her Oscar-winning role as a Satanist in Rosemary’s Baby (1968)! Harold starts to enjoys a love affair with Maude, and on the day of her 80th birthday, proposes to her.

The delightfully funny story, Colin Higgins’s lovely, dazzlingly skilfully written screenplay, the hilarious stars and Ashby’s ideal, labour-of-love direction combine to make this an instant cult hit back in 1971 that has turned into a long-term classic.

The main triumph belongs to Gordon and Cort, who give the most triumphantly expert and endearing of performances, and they’re just lovely together too, sharing great screen chemistry, driving the movie to victory with a little help from Vivian Pickles as Cort’s wacky mother, Mrs Chasen, a snobbish and egocentric woman indifferent to Harold. She has other ideas for Harold, signing him up for a dating service and trying to get him into the army.

Telling a movie story of a romance between a 20-year-old boy and a 79-year-old woman was considered extremely daring at the time, but the central love affair in Harold and Maude is a thing of great heart-warming beauty, handled charmingly and tastefully in an otherwise very black comedy, the couple’s love story much less shocking than the boy’s other passion – for fake suicides. The script makes much out of the story’s irony, which turns out to be that the boy thinks he’s the free spirit and revolutionary but actually it’s the old lady who is the truly radical one of the pair.

It’s great to hear all those sweet Cat Stevens songs on the soundtrack once again, especially If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, Tea for the Tillerman, I Think I See The Light, Trouble, I Wish, I Wish and Miles from Nowhere.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1077

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