(NB: there will be spoilers in this article, almost from the off. If you haven't seen this film yet, do so now and stop wasting the time of the rest of the world. Then come back.)
As the romance progresses the satirical image of the world that envelops it remains. Harold's mother continues to overbear and tyrannise with her restrictive responses, delivered with the smarm of the upper crust. Like L'ancient regime itself, she still dresses young but is unaware how dated this makes her look. Her ideas of parenthood are more akin to a headmistress than a mum. The motorcycle cop's strict training has made his drills for human interaction vulnerable to the unexpected which Maude delivers in an unending stream (these scenes are so funny I've had people demand a rewind and rewatch on the spot). Harold's whispering Californian psychiatrist (often in a suit that matches Harold's) coos shaping questions impotently at his patient, receiving either too much or barely anything (at one point Harold on the couch, arms crossed over his chest like a corpse, falls into a gentle sleep during the consult). The absurd military uncle with his uniform's empty sleeve rigged for a salute is the stuff of a Playboy cartoon. The priest delivers his disgust at the age gap between the couple with an ugly unselfconscious relevation of his own lusts. This is a line-up of its era's satirical targets and, on paper, they are as thin and cliche as the ones in more farcical offerings like Cold Turkey and more strident than those in the much bleaker Little Murders. They shouldn't work, at least not across five decades.
But it does and for a few reasons. First the obvious ones that have to do with putting a movie together. The casting throughout is for fit. Ruth Gordon is a blend of her nightmare neighbour in Rosemary's Baby and the dementia-stricken miasma mama in Where's Poppa? with added hippy pontificator. Her sweeping declamations could easily have worn out the hardiest of viewers but her delivery in a kind of singsong stream that suggests both a lifelong confidence in the truth of what she is saying as well as a dark conviction that it had better be. Her moment of vulnerability when stumbling on a memory of a lost love does not ocme out of nowhere but feels part of her personal continuum. Bud Cort is almost in whiteface as the cadaverous Harold. We see his invention and delight at subverting his mother's shoehorning attempts to conform him through a pall of ice. Maude's thawing of him begins with his incredulity at her actions and attitudes. She makes him curious. The last time he was curious is delivered in a monologue which leads to his comparable moment of vulnerability in front of Maude. His character journey is the longest and continues beyond the film's credits, as he walks into them the sole character in the tale who was learned anything. From his whispered responses to the screaming of the word"what?!" near the end span riches of performance.
Hal Ashby organises a San Fransico of natural beauty and artificial opulence, continuing his lead characters' polarity. You can smell the fragrance of the forest and also admire the french polished furnishings of Harold's family home which resembles nothing so much as an extended funeral home. Maude's abode is cluttered with trinkets, gymcracks, trash and treasure. There are many jokes delivered in introductory shots and much of the film's wit lives there but the one that isn't a joke is the cut to the post-coital Harold and Maude in the bed of her rail car as she sleeps contentedly while Harold blows shining bubbles with a toy pipe. The visual energy of this film is constant but also constantly maintained. It is flawlessly paced.
Colin Higgins script was his UCLA master's thesis and it's what brought him (while working as a studio head's pool boy, no shit!) to the attention of Hollywood money. His sale of the script was on the understanding that he would also direct but the studio passed and preferred Ashby, young and hip enough to get it but also a proven orchestrator of image, sound and performances from the successful The Landlord. Ashby, to his eternal credit, insisted on Higgins being with him on set to observe for his future in the industry. Higgins wrote a fable of life and death as a rom com and pushed contemporary satire into each last corner like Polyfilla. Most of that made it to the screen and of that, only the most burdensome of Maude's pontifications were cut. Ashby concentrated on making the continuous wit of the dialogue timed to feel natural here but enjoyably set up there. Mostly, he directed the central performances to be increasingly naturalistic even as the whimsy mounted. But there's more at play here.
And this is the thing that this film's copyists never get right. For all the debt that the quirk in American independent movies of the last twenty-five years owe to Harold and Maude most of them miss its most important instuction: if death is a character in your black comedy you need to keep it centre screen. The age gap that Harold and Maude uses for its most obvious tension is quite swiftly dissipated by their easy interweaving. Death and Life dance well together. But we are given funerals (alive with japes, yes, but they are still sombre occasions), neglected city trees, smothering in carbon monoxide, Harold's own "suicides" which can be very gruesome, Uncle Victor's entire career has been done in close proxity to the reaper on a military scale and even the crumbing veterans, and then there is Maude's concentration camp tattoo and then there is her birthday confession that she has set up her own suicide and the sense that she has earned the right to stop when she wants (whether we agree with that or not, it is what she thinks). This is where Harold as a portrait of Death as a young man has to change his being. There is no possibilty of his staging another suicide after this story ends. Everything about this story, the comedy, the satire and the gut punch of the climax has been worked for and hard.
So, for all the admiration this movie gets, all the warm tributes given by the bright young things of independent quirk, few of its lessons are taken up. It's true that they are hard to achieve; you do need strong skill and real vision to apply them. I have lost count of lazy writing that is plugged by the whackiness of characters, reliance on sudden reversals of character or tacked on moments of gravity dropboxed in from other movies. For your benefit I have tabled a number of examples with helpful snap judgements:
200 Days of Summer - no. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- yes. Frances Ha - not even close. Punch Drunk Love - big yes. Little Miss Sunshine - no. Nebraska - yes. Garden State - no. Ghost World - yes. Igby Goes Down - yech, no. Donnie Darko - yes, but only the original cut. I Heart Huckabees - nope. Juno - yes. Buffalo 66 - thy name is inept, no. Being John Malkovich - big classic yes. The Future - no. American Splendor - uh huh. Anything at all by Wes Anderson - no, simply, no ... ever.
See, I managed to find among the many qualifying titles a pretty even result. Then again the continued career of Wes Anderson means that the yesses will probably never catch up. Choose from this list anything you have seen and see if you agree and for those you dispute ask why someone might think as they do about them.
Is Harold and Maude so perfect, then? No, nothing is. There are moments of cuteness that belong back in '70s sitcoms like Maude's exaggerated reckless driving. Some of Harold's "suicides" would be impossible for one person to so quickly set up. He makes a Jaguar E-type into a hearse, presumably with a blowtorch. The matching doctor and patient suits are funny but, however unfairly, they make me think of The Royal Tenenbaums. The prank with the colonel would not work in the real world. The Odorific recording is pure fantasy. However, none of these are pivots for the plot or characters but points at which the film stretches into a kind of magical realism. And sometimes they are just old hat and long ineffective.
It's hard to gauge how well known Harold and Maude has become in the age of the tappable classic and remastered physical copy for the home. I can recall showing it to a small group of millennials who left the experience with a new entry in their top ten films of all time. This film still works with anyone but I just don't know how many have sat through it in the past twenty years. The importance of this question has to do with its influence on the makers of those quirky films listed o'erhead and the audiences who, unaware of what they were starting, made Rushmore a hit movie. At that time Harold and Maude was a rarity, lucky to be caught at one in the morning on a commerical channel. People seemed to think Wes Anderson had created his breakthrough from whole cloth. To give him credit, there are more influences on show that Hal Asby's classic but that's the one that dominates and that's the one that still leads the derivation list in every single film Anderson has released. I don't hate Wes Anderson because he copied Harold and Maude, I hate that so few seem to know it. Sigh. Anyway...
Sorry for ranting; this is one of my favourite films. I've owned a copy of it on every home video medium since VHS and the Criterion Blu-Ray I watched again last night proved that it still works, perhaps now in my maturity even more than it did when I was more like Harold. Before those home versions I would see it on late night tv when late night tv allowed that kind of unofficial film studies education. Before that I had only my sister's account of it, seen at a Townsville arthouse I have red-facedly forgotten. It was made at a time when movies were huge and wonderful to me if I saw them, as a child at a cinema. I was too young to see this when new and it never seem to make it to any of the arthouses in Brisbane or Melbourne that I went to. But the name was strong and its utterance in conversation drew smiles from the others.
(Edit: I can't believe I forgot to mention the sourced score. Ashby had wanted the then emerging Elton John to provide songs but John was touring and couldn't do it so he recommended Cat Stevens. Cat Stevens' songs used in this film come from two albums but include two written for the film (so it's not strictly a sourced job. This is a film with an essential musical association. Stevens' gentle melancholy and pain, mostly folky, acoustic arrangements fill the experience of Harold's delayed entry into the human race and Maude's departure from it. Mostly plaintive (and downright tear-producing in the "Trouble" scene) but also light and life affirming like the film itself, they are essential. The opening ritual scene played to the song Don't Be Shy is a moment of mutual momentum between music and filmmaking. If you become a fan of the film you will probably want more of the music. There is a soundtrack album available quite accessibly. Go fot it.)
It is untrue to suggest that they dont make 'em like this anymore or that our times are beyond such cinema when this one still works so very well and I see many strong movies every year, defying even global pandemics and cinema closures. My recdent viewings of Titane and Lamb remind me of how I love to be ambushed by cinema and, as I've gone through these anniversary revisits this year I've noted the power of the strongest of them. I've had to miss out on a few due to lack of availability or time but from the dodginess of Pretty Maids All in a Row to this classic of macabre romantic comedy I'm already thinking about what came out in 1972....
Hope everyone who reads this enjoys the turn of the year and can have some relief from the microbes in 2022. I know what I want different about the next twelve months but I won't say for fear of jinxing. See you on the flip side. (Oh, there will probably be a few more reviews here but I thought the end of this series was the best place for a seasonal call.) bye till then.
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