Taglines: This is Harold. Fully equipped to deal with life. This is Maude. Harold’s girlfriend.
Harold and Maude movie storyline. Young adult Harold Chasen, solitary and friendless by choice, is obsessed with death, this fascination manifesting itself in he staging his own fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending funerals, even of people he doesn’t know, all to the chagrin of his exasperated wealthy mother with whom he lives.
Mrs. Chasen is determined for Harold to be “normal”, including her sending him into therapy to deal with his issues and finding him a girlfriend through a computer dating service. It is at a series of funerals that Harold meets Maude, on the cusp of her eightieth birthday, she who too attends funerals of strangers. Unlike Harold, Maude is obsessed with life – her own life to be more precise – she does whatever she wants to please herself, damned what others may think or how they may be affected.
Since she can’t take material possessions with her, she is more interested in experiences, with whatever material possessions she has – often “borrowed” without asking – only to further those experiences. Their friendship is initially based on how the other can further their own priority. But as Maude shows Harold how to truly live, Harold falls in love with her. Their relationship, already limited in time by the sheer math, is curtailed even more as Maude shows him only not how to live well, but die well.
Harold and Maude is a 1971 American coming-of-age dark comedy drama film directed by Hal Ashby and released by Paramount Pictures. It incorporates elements of dark humor and existentialist drama. The plot revolves around the exploits of a young man named Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) who is intrigued with death. Harold drifts away from the life that his detached mother (Vivian Pickles) prescribes for him, and slowly develops a strong friendship, and eventually a romantic relationship, with a 79-year-old woman named Maude (Ruth Gordon) who teaches Harold about living life to its fullest and that life is the most precious gift of all.
The film was based on a screenplay written by Colin Higgins and published as a novel in 1971. Filming locations in the San Francisco Bay Area included both Holy Cross Cemetery and Golden Gate National Cemetery, and the ruins of the Sutro Baths.
Critically and commercially unsuccessful when originally released, the film developed a cult following and in 1983 began making a profit. The film is ranked number 45 on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Funniest Movies of all Time and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1997, for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.
Harold and Maude (1971)
Directed by: Hal Ashby
Starring: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack, Charles Tyner, Ellen Geer, Eric Christmas, Judy Engles, Shari Summers, Tom Skerritt, Susan Madigan, Gordon De Vol
Screenplay by: Colin Higgins
Production Design by: Michael D. Haller
Cinematography by: John Alonzo
Film Editing by: William A. Sawyer, Edward Warschilka
Costume Design by: William Ware Theiss
Makeup Department: Kathryn Blondell, Bob Stein, Rebecca White
Music by: Cat Stevens
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: December 20, 1971
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