“I suppose you think that’s very funny, Harold.”
The film opens with a long sequence showing Harold preparing to kill himself by hanging. And, indeed, he actually goes through with the act, suspended above the ground with a noose around his neck inside a large, well-decorated home of people of obvious wealth. Into the room enters Mrs. Chase who looks at Harold’s lifeless body hanging there before calmly sitting down and dialing the phone. Only then does she Harold with this unexpected inquiry and only then does the audience realize Harold is not really dead. What’s more, he is a particularly macabre individual and by this point in his life no outrageous act on his part is taken with great seriousness. Which is why he currently in the care of a psychiatrist.
“A very common neurosis; particularly in this society, whereby the male child subconsciously wishes to sleep with his mother. Of course, what puzzles me, Harold; is that you want to sleep with your grandmother.”
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem most people have with Harold and Maude. Both the characters and the film. The characters in the film have a problem with the relationship between such a young man and an elderly woman. Not so strangely, so do many viewers. While few ever blinked twice at decades of age difference between an older man and a younger woman throughout film history, the relationship between Harold and Maude still possesses the power to disturb many. Of course, the psychiatrist here is something of a pompous nincompoop, but that hardly means he doesn’t represent the majority opinion.
“Try something new each day. After all, we’re given life to find it out. It doesn’t last forever.”
Maude is a fountain of wisdom. Not all of it as is coherent as this offering, but then again not only is she elderly, but she’s played by Ruth Gordon. Unlike so many actresses who start having troubling finding good roles as they age in Hollywood, Gordon actually started finding good roles coming her way the older she got. She somehow managed to defy the aging process by actually seeming to get more youthfully vibrant and flighty with each passing decade. By the time the role of Maude came along, it became one of those especially rare cases where before too long it just became impossible to imagine bothering making the movie at all without casting her as Maude. Well, it seemed such to everyone but French director Jean-Paul Carrère who remade the film less than a decade later. So, in a way, he lived out Maude’s own advice; it has so far not occurred to many others to try something like making a new version without Ruth Gordon.
“Do you enjoy knives?”
What applies to Ruth Gordon as Maude applies with nearly equal truthful to Bud Cort as Harold. Whereas Maude exemplifies the free-spirited enjoyment of aging manifested within the actress playing her, Harold is an extension of the somewhat more unidentifiable oddball quirkiness of Bud Cort. Cort has enjoyed a long and varied career that has perhaps defied the expectations of those who suspected his offbeat charm could not possibly outlive his youthful appearance. Although his most interesting performances—unlike Gordon—are from the early part of his career, he has managed—like Gordon—to defy the natural laws against growing old in Hollywood. All of this is to make it clear that of the roughly dozen or so different ways that the above quote might be said in a way that makes it memorable, Cort’s choice is unquestionably unique and arguably the most perfect.
“Oh yes, dear. I took the pills an hour ago. I should be gone by midnight.”
The film begins with a funny suicide attempt by Harold. It ends with a decidedly non-phony suicide attempt by Maude on her birthday. She has made it clear that she thinks 80 years is long enough to enjoy life and when the film begins, she is 79 years old.
