Harold And Maude

Black comedies don't come much blacker than this cult favorite from 1972, and they don't come much funnier, either. It seemed that director Hal Ashby was the perfect choice to mine a mother lode of eccentricity from the original script by Colin Higgins, about the unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth Gordon). They meet at a funeral, and Maude finds something oddly appealing about Harold, urging him to "reach out" and grab life by the lapels as opposed to dwelling morbidly on mortality. Harold grows fond of the old gal--she's a lot more fun than the girls his mother desperately matches him up with--and together they make Harold & Maude one of the sweetest and most unconventional love stories ever made. Much of the earlier humor arises from Harold's outrageous suicide fantasies, played out as a kind of twisted parlor game to mortify his mother, who's grown immune to her strange son's antics. Gradually, however, the film's clever humor shifts to a brighter outlook and finally arrives at a point where Harold is truly happy to be alive. Featuring soundtrack songs by Cat Stevens, this comedy certainly won't appeal to all tastes (it was a box-office flop when first released), but if you're on its quirky wavelength, it might just strike you as one of the funniest movies you've ever seen. --Jeff Shannon



Self-destructive and needy but wealthy teenager Harold is obsessed with death and spends his leisure time attending funerals, watching the demolition of buildings, visiting junkyards, simulating suicides trying to get the attention of his indifferent, snobbish and egocentric mother, and having sessions with his psychologist. When Harold meets the anarchic seventy-nine-year-old Maude at a funeral, they become friends and the old lady discloses other perspectives of the cycle of life for him. Meanwhile, his mother enlists him in a dating service and tries to force him to join the army. On the day of Maude's eightieth birthday, Harold proposes to her but he finds the truth about life at the end of hers.
- Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil




Harold is a depressed, death-obsessed 20-year-old man/child who spends his free time attending funerals and pretending to commit suicide in front of his mother. At a funeral, Harold befriends Maude, a 79-year-old woman who has a zest for life. She and Harold spend much time together during which she exposes him to the wonders and possibilities of life. After rejecting his mother's three attempts to set him up with a potential wife, and committing fake suicide in front of all of them, Harold announces that he is to be married to Maude. However, Maude has a surprise for Harold that is to change his life forever.
- Written by Rick Gregory




SYNOPSIS

Harold Chasen is a nineteen-year-old boy obsessed with death so much so that he torments his mother (Vivian Pickles) with elaborately staged fake suicides.

Harold meets Maude, 79 years old, at a funeral. The pair form a bond, with Maude slowly opening Harold to the sensual pleasures of music and art and the general anarchy of living for the moment and doing whatever one pleases. Their relationship turns sexual, despite Harold's mother's best attempts to get her son to settle down with someone she considers appropriate.

Upon Maude's 80th birthday at a surprise party Harold has thrown for her Maude reveals that she has taken poison and will be dead by midnight. She restates her firm belief that 80 is the proper age to die.

Harold has Maude rushed to the hospital, but it is too late. In the final sequence, it appears that a grief-stricken Harold drives his car (a Jaguar he had earlier transformed to look like a hearse) off a cliff. The final shot, however, reveals Harold with the banjo Maude gave him strapped around his shoulder upon the cliff. He walks away, picking out on his banjo the notes to Cat Stevens' "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out".