Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude
December 20, 1971
Paramount
Comedy, Romance, Musical
DVD
B+

Thirty-year-old screenwriter Colin Higgins, 42-year-old director Hal Ashby, and 23-year-old Bud Cort (as almost 20-year-old Harold) and 75-year-old Ruth Gordon (as almost-80 Maude) brought their unique, quirky talents together to make this unique, quirky movie, ably supported by 40-year-old Vivian Pickles as Harold's fantastically pretentious, mostly unflappable mother.  This is a tricky film to talk about because it's become a Cult Movie, some people's favorite movie, and it's certainly meant a lot to me since I saw it at 19 on campus.  (They also showed Amarcord and a beach party movie, not all on one night.  It was a very confused film society.)  I think it's one of those not quite great movies.  I don't think everything in it works, like the way Maude keeps stealing cars, but it remains wise, sweet, sometimes joyous, and very funny.  I don't want to oversell it, because it's also in a way a quiet, little movie, with many long-distance shots and details to hunt out (like the PermaSeal on the coffin).  I think when you watch it, you have to get past its reputation and just enjoy it, because that's what Maude would want.

Ruth Gordon is just right as life-loving Maude, although I kept thinking She doesn't look 80, she barely looks 70.  Baby-faced Cort as Harold, despite his faked suicides, has a gentleness that is rare in movies, and when Maude brings him to life, he expresses it whimsically, as when he somersaults.  The script by Higgins is sharp and dry (he'd later pen Foul Play and 9 to 5, two other movies that mean a lot to me), while Ashby not only gets just the right emotions out of everyone (even the cartoony characters, like Harold's uncle), but he has some great shots, like the tombstones that look like a computer punch card from a distance.  And I must say that the Cat Stevens songs fit the movie perfectly, perhaps not as good as the Simon & Garfunkel music in The Graduate, but integrated even more effectively.

Marjorie Eaton, who was Miss Persimmon in Mary Poppins, this time plays Madame Arouet.  Michael L. Davis was Chief of Police in Skidoo and is unconfirmed as a policeman here.  Eric Christmas, who plays the priest disgusted by the idea of Harold's "firm young body" commingling with Maude's "withered" flesh, would be Senator Polk in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!  Shari Summers, who plays Edith Phern (one of Harold's computer dates) would be a nurse in Who's That Girl?