Harold and Maude
 

So who else here likes this flick? I just finished watching it for the 20th or so time...every time I seem to notice some new quirky thing about it...harold lights a match using a lighter to ultimately light two candles with a match...:D

So, in the end sequence...where it's flashing between him at the hospital and him driving the jag around and ultimately off the cliff...what do you think really happened? Do you think he jumped out of the car at the last second? Do you think he actually killed himself and it was his ghost playing the banjo? Do you think it was all just something going through his mind while at the hospital?

So many other points of discussion in the film...how did he hang himself and actually not die? Why was his mother so oblivious to all of it?

Such a great film.

discuss....

i saw the film one time only, and that was in its original theatrical release in the early 70s, probably '71. unforgettable film, would love to see it again, you just gave me an idea for my netflix queue...

I remember liking this film a lot. I saw it back in 82 or so at a college film fest. Thanks for reminding me about it!

Great movie! I have always wanted a Volvo P1800 like Harolds hurst conversion car.

One of my all time cult favorites. I still have the hots for Ruth Gordon.

I have the movie, watch it every now and then for a touch of sanity. I first saw the movie in a theater over in Sommerville, Massachusetts, where it was the only movie on the venue aside from the King of Hearts. Now, that is a movie worth watching. If you rent it, get the French version, not the dubbed English, it takes away from the whole movie. Both movies played there for years on the weekends, always had a fairly packed house to boot. The other side of town had the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where people got on stage and played the parts. Used to leave during the "rain" scene, especially if you did not have a rain coat!

It was a sad sick movie about sad sick people. I loved it.

Unfortunately, most people did not get the point or recognise it for how prescient it was. The movie spoke to the desolution and aridity of both the culture of the rich and the cultural avant-guard.

In having a point to your life, or a blief in something beyond yourself, neither group had anything worth saying or sending forward in time.


By the way, does anyone know what movie had the quote "sombody threw away a perfectly good white boy". And I do mean besides and before "Men at Work".

The scenes where he is avoiding dates are priceless.

This film is a fave.

I know I'm supposed to like it since I have a sick sense of humor, but I do not.

I find most, if not all, of the characters to be two dimensional. Plus, I do not like the Cat Stevens' tunes. Not one bit.

1971 had so many more memorable, less cliched, counter-cultural flicks. For example:

Clockwork Orange
Dirty Harry
Get Carter
Klute
Shaft
Straw Dogs
Sweet Sweetback's Baadassssss Song
Two-Lane Blacktop
Vanishing Point

Ken

Oh that's too easy... Blazing Saddles. They've been playing the hell out that movie on AMC and such lately.

The other great quote is from Slim Pickens... "Somebody's got to go back and get a shitload of dimes!"

Great film. I chuckle at it every time...

Regards,
Gordon.

Love Harold & Maude. Seen it numerous times. Lot of nuances going on but I suppose its basically about a young guy obsessed with death who falls for an old woman obsessed with life.

I think the final scene symbolizes rebirth. He drives the hearse over the cliff thus ridding himself of his old obsession/persona and walks away changed. Maude's influence was complete.

And ending later stolen in Quadrophenia.

Great movie and soundtrack (Cat Stevens--original songs--quite rare in LP). We just saw it at home recently since our elder son (filmmaker) hadn't yet seen it amongst the thousands of movies that he has seen. Ruth Gordon is a real pistol in this movie, and some of Harold's antics are just insane!

Love the movie, Love the soundtrack. Have it on the reissued vinyl. think I will go give it a spin.

It was Better Off Dead with John Cusack...Booger accidentally pushed him off the bridge he was thinking of jumping off of, and he fell into a passing garbage truck, two black dudes working on a telephone pole saw him pass under them, he waves, one looks to another says "It's a shame when they be throwin away a perfectly good white boy like that"

At least that's how I remember it...:D

My hackneyed taste in music aside, for the many of you who dig the Cat, there is a limited edition soundtrack (LP only) recently issued that Cameron Crowe spurred. Essential for those who love Cat Stevens.

http://www.cameroncrowe.com/wordpress/?p=50

The flick is essential viewing for any film buff.

Saw it in the late seventies. As already pointed out, the date scare-aways are priceless. I think some people just didn't get past the May-December relationship to really understand the movie. But then again, I have always been a fan of black comedy (Eating Raoul :thmbsp:) so maybe my opinion is slightly skewed.

Maybe I misunderstand your reply, but Harold's car was a Jaguar XK-E, at least when I saw the movie when it was first released, and over a hundred times since with my kids!!

I was interviewing a BMW designer once and asked him if he'd seen the movie. He looked at me rather quizzically and then told me how it was the inspiration for the BMW Z3 M-Coupé. But I already figured that out, which is why I was asking the question. It turned out to be the result of a design exercise on a slow day in Munich.
:banana:

http://cache.jalopnik.com/assets/res.../HM_Hearse.jpg http://www.autoplenum.de/Bilder/P/p0...1998-2000-.jpg

Absolutely loved it! Never laughed so hard (mainly had no idea what it was about before seeing it. The whole taken by surprise factor, it was a book 1st i think). A parody --especially the anti war, took a few pokes at religion (other than the fact that Ruth's character was in her younger life a survivor of the Nazi death camps). She saw death as a new beginning and imparted that to Harold -- A very Life and hope affirming flick I thought. Just my .02 from an aging memory.

........another one of that period, "Soylent Green" Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson if i recall, quite a dark film

Brain fart...you are right I love that car as well. :D

http://www.cartype.com/pics/3815/ful...800-conv_1.jpg

One of my all-time favorites.:yes:

Hey Ken, thanks for reminding me about Vanishing Point. Another one that I really like, and haven't seen it for ages.

Brilliant film, it's too bad Bud Cort didn't go on to be a big movie star like he should have.

Count me in. Saw it many moons ago and (despite obvious differences) always stupidly recall it along with the "King of Hearts" (great flick as well). However, VERY few things save the Best of the Best, IMNSHO, come anywhere near to the greatness of H&M, the first and in some ways best movie by Colin Higgins (RIP).

FYI, you do know that, due to budget constraints, they actually *did* destroy that hot-modded ride at the end? The original H&M 'hearse' was still extant, last I heard, but that pretty pretty was trashed for real. What a wipe, eh?

IIRC, Colin Higgins himself alluded to it being the first of those choices in an interview -- anyone able to recall the same (or a direct contradiction of the same) please sound off. I do not recall the interview, sorry, nor do I have a copy of it...I think...

If I find it, I'll say so.

In any event, any one of those endings works fine w/me, although viewing the movie from the most (ahem) 'Buddhist' perspective, if there is such a thing, would probably have option #1 making the most sense, I'd think, as then he would have truly grasped what Maude was trying to teach him (a la throwing the coin he gave her into the water), I'd speculate. Of course, considering the writer's own views, and the lack of Maude's ghost hanging around, I'd suspect that disincludes option #2...But I'm not up to debating the point (as that is against the point of good art).

Provided there's no EMT or the like to put hands-on & check for vitals, staging mock deaths is reasonably easy, given the budget (for makeup/props/etcetera), the desire, and skill. I've seen good make-up artists make people up to change their race (from Caucasian to Japanese -- we're talking stage-level+++ stuff being done, though) which *actually* looked convincing, even when seen from 8' away or so.


I figured once he told the shrink he'd already done his "theatrics" seventeen times to date ("No...I would *NOT* say for her benefit...") that she'd already been the gamut of some pretty well-done and, at least the first time, incredibly shocking sights, to the point where she finally just came to ignore it as much as she could.

The dirty look she gave him while he was playing the floater in the pool was *priceless*, though :D

The self-immolation and all the other Date Evasion Tricks were PRICELESS, IMNSHO. the "...Do you...'enjoy' knives...?" line is oft-used among many I know. Classic, to be sure.

One of my all time favorite films!
The all Cat soundtrack is fabulous as well.

For me, the best line of the film is near the end as Harold tells a dying Maude, "I love you," and she responds, "That's great. Go love some more."

I've always felt that Harold walks away from the wreck just as shown in the film. I believe the destruction of the Jaguar hearse is a symbol of the old, death-obsessed Harold ending his days in great childish flourish while a more humble, complete creature is ready to begin his journey with nothing more than a spring in his step and a banjo in his hands.

If you want to sing out, sing out!

I thought so, too. A symbolic abandoning of his past now that Maude has taught him so much about living. He's starting fresh.

Haven't seen it yet. But getting to read this. I think I will. Thanks for the post.

ahh Ken! It's the Cat Stevens' tunes that make this film.
I'm no Cat Stevens fan by a long shot but it's this film that always
helps me like some of his music and not dislike the man for the path he chose.
You do have to be in the mood for a film like this.

Other than Harold & Maude, judging by the movies he was in, I can understand why...

I saw this one years ago back when A&E was still a good channel (they used to show Woody Allen flicks quite a bit as well) and enjoyed it quite a bit. If I am not mistaken weren't most of the Cat Steven's tunes in this movie on his 1970 album Mona Bone Jakon? Actually another great and very hard to find film which not only featured Cat Stevens in the sound track, but Can is Deep End which featured Jane Asher (McCartney's girlfriend for most of the 60's) and a boy slightly younger than the one in Harold and Maude but going through a different type of torment. This one also featured a slightly past her prime, former British bombshell Diana Dors.

Brings back memories
 

I've seen that movie a bunch of times. I took my ex-wife to it and she said that Harold's mother was just like HER mother. That should have been my first warning.

This movie begs for a good remastering, as the DVD is awful.

:thmbsp::thmbsp::thmbsp:

Criterion should do this one. I mean, Criterion just released "My Dinner with Andre," which is arguably more obscure and, in retrospect, less meaningful.

Also, the music deserves the Criterion touch. Criterion's "Dazed and Confused," with its killer bong-based soundtrack, shines.

Speaking of the Cat/Yusef, the June Mojo magazine has a good interview with the composer that presents his spiritual journey in a new light (at least to me). Not to mention a great CD of Island label folk (but that's another trip).

Ken

That is part of the charm. Do you really want to see Ruth Gordon in higher definition?