User Reviews

Harold and Maude is an unlikely love story that takes readers on an unexpected adventure as the lives of two unique yet perfectly matched people intertwine. In this story the underdog, Harold, comes out a changed and better man in the end of the movie. This story line appeals to many viewers whether or not they can directly relate to his situation.

The movie was filmed in the San Francisco Bay area and released in America in 1971. The film was directed by Hal Ashby and written Colin Higgins, with featured music by Cat Stevens throughout. Although the film was a box office disappointment, it has since reached new heights, being praised by film critics and avid-viewers alike as a funny, believable, charming movie.

Harold's character, played by Bud Cort, is a young man coming from a rich family who goes against his mother's every will in a desperate attempt to gain her attention and affection. He continually stages his own deaths and suicides, some more ridiculous than others, until she reaches her wits end and orders him to marry in an attempt to fix his attitude for good. Unlike most young men his age, Harold enjoys visiting funerals, graveyards, and demolition sites. Although he doesn't find a bride his mother would approve of at any of his hangouts, he does find a new and wonderful friend.

Maude's character is the pivotal person in Harold's life. Like him, she enjoys the morbid, but for different reasons. Through her eccentricities and unconditional love for living things, she shows Harold that life can be good if it's truly enjoyed and appreciated to the fullest each day. "A lot of people enjoy being dead, but they're not dead. They're just backing away from life." Maude is considerably older than Harold, and seems to take him under her wing through the movie, helping him find things in life that make him happy besides being dead.

The culmination of this happy-go-lucky movie is Harold and Maude falling in love, or Harold falling in love with her. He shows her the things that he has learned in a birthday party he throws for her 80th birthday. All is going well until Harold discovers she has poisoned herself in order to die because she doesn't believe she wants to live beyond 80. Harold is distraught and takes her to the hospital, but not before it's too late. The audience can sympathize with his sadness and grief at the loss of what we believe is his only true friend in life, and his lover.

The life lessons Maude taught Harold are obvious at the end of the movie, when the shot angles and scenes lead us to believe he will drive himself off a cliff in one last suicide, but walks away from the cliff with a banjo in his arms, plucking out "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out" by Cat Stevens. He is going to go on and live life to the fullest, so he can truly live before he dies.

The film is full of interesting shots and scenes. There are some strange angles and locations that keep the viewer intrigued and following the story. A great scene that allows the viewer to think that they are really watching the couple as they evolve as people is the scene where they are dancing in Maude's house. The camera pans out through the window and tracks them at their eye level as they dance down her streetcar home to a Cat Stevens song. This is just one example of the brilliant filming abilities and directing used in the film.

The film also uses the music of Cat Stevens to illustrate scenes in a new light. The scene where Harold and Maude are in the military graveyard is one example of this. As the camera view pans out and up to show more and more of the massive graveyard, the song "Where do the Children Play" cries out above the dark scene. This seems to be a reference not only to wars in general but possibly the Vietnam War specifically. The scene is just one political statement made in the movie, but one that stood out strongly to me.

The movie starts out very strange, and very slow. The viewer isn't given much information to go on or use to enjoy the film fully until Maude appears and shakes up the structure of Harold's life. The ending of the movie is the culmination of a warm and exciting journey that the audience has followed Harold make and felt as though they were apart of, and the way he handles Maude's death is a closing scene that is sure to stick on minds and hearts of all kinds of viewers.

I've been choosing movies from 'best of' lists on the internet. This eclectic method is fraught with widely varying opinions that may not reflect your own, and doesn't necessarily cull out the dross.

HAROLD AND MAUDE is not dross, yet it is not the high art some would have you believe. It's an inoffensive, entertaining story nevertheless, and most of the action held my attention throughout. I had absolutely no idea how old this film was, though this historical factor merely made the subject matter more interesting.

Harold is hard to identify with as a super-rich, attention-deprived, depressed and lonely man-child. Maude is a hyperactive, unconventional, kleptomaniac. As a holocaust survivor we are supposed to forgive the fact she steals whatever she wants while spouting truisms. I presume we're supposed to take away the message that life holds many wonders as long as we don't waste time trying to fit in or observe social norms. Unfortunately, style overrides substance and this movie fails to deliver its metaphors effectively.

Both Harold and Maude were well acted in a deliberate over-the-top manner. The direction and writing is also very good. They must have bought the rights to Cat Stevens' entire album and I liked these touches of 70's culture as they popped up here and there.

Overall HAROLD AND MAUDE is too clever for its own good but an entertaining watch.