What happens when you find something that has risen above the test of time? Something so entertaining that it makes you laugh and you want to tell everyone you know that they must see this movie for the first time or at least one more time. That is the film Harold and Maude, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.
If you love to laugh and are enamoured with life and fascinated with death, you will want to see this classic film playing at the Patricia Theatre on Valentine’s Day.
Harold and Maude is a dark comedy, a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, such as funerals and death. I first saw this film when it was released in 1971 and fell in love with it.
The story is a classic love story like one you have never seen before. Harold, a 19-year-old boy from a wealthy family, is enamoured with death, drives a hearse and goes to funerals. Maude is 79 years old and is fascinated with life. She celebrates this by seeing funerals as a celebration of life.
Harold and Maude run into each other at funerals as they both are looking in as outsiders observing life and death.
Harold lives with his mother in their mansion. To get attention he explores and acts out suicide attempts, much to the shock of the dates his mother sets up for him.
Maude is taken by the joys of life and everything it has to offer, whether she is entitled to them or not. Living on the wild side, she steals cars, breaks every traffic law imaginable, is an environmental activist and laughs her way through everyday happenstance.
Harold and Maude develop a relationship through their mutual obsession with life, death and the need to find meaning in everything surrounding them.
Master filmmaker Hal Ashby (Shampoo, Coming Home, The Last Detail, Being There) took a well crafted screenplay by Colin Higgins, a soundtrack by Cat Stevens, and a cast of characters led by Ruth Gordon as Maude, Bud Cort as Harold, and a cast of characters played by Vivian Pickles (the mother) Tom Skerritt (the highway patrolman), G. Wood (the psychiatrist), Charles Tyner (his uncle the military general) and Ellen Geer playing a potential date, combined those elements with the age-old themes of life and death, laughter and tears, and created a masterpiece of dark comedy.
There is great trivia surrounding this film. Elton John was considered for the lead role of Harold, however, Cort was cast because of his work with Ashby on MASH. Tom Skerritt did his role as a favour to his friend Ashby and used a pseudonym for the credits. The custom hearse was built by the artist who built the original Batmobile.
Just for the fact that I am still smiling and thinking about the film, and it is one of the best dark comedies ever made, Harold and Maude deserves the highest rating of five out of five tugboats.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary, this film will be showing at the Patricia Theatre on February 14 and 15 (7 pm), in conjunction with the author (Heidi Grecko) of the book Glorious Birds: A Celebratory Homage to Harold and Maude, who will be attending in person.
Stephen J. Miller is a producer and creative writer in feature films and television, and past owner of repertoire movie theatres.
