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1 Summary

The film first introduces us to Harold, an alienated teenaged boy from a wealthy family who lives in a large mansion with his dominating mother. Harold stages realistic mock suicides. This has evidently been going on for so long that his mother takes no notice, other than when Harold causes a particular mess with his fake blood. For amusement, Harold attends funerals of people he doesn't know. At these he repeatedly sees Maude, a 79 year-old woman who befriends him. Maude is very much his opposite: energetic, impulsive, and light-hearted. The two form an unlikely friendship, then romance.

The film features dark humor, social satire (including anti- war), promotes the notion of living life to its fullest, and has long had a cult following.

2 Themes

Hal Ashby, the director of the film, was part of the San Fransisco youth culture, and his film posits the doomed youth of the alienated against the vital age of the Holocaust survivors. (In a brief glance, Harold sees the tattoo of a number on Maude's forearm.) While Harold is part of a society where he can have no importance and no meaning, Maude has survived against totalitarianism. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Harold can only feel significant by dying. Maude, on the other hand, is a fictionalizer and a dreamer. She imagines beauty where there is none, believes in the innate goodness of people (but not the state), and practices what she calls her own, individual, revolution. Her backstory is only hinted in the film, for Ashby avoids any didacticism. She tells Harold at one point about Dreyfus seeing fantastic birds on Devil's IslandDevil's Island ( French le du Diable , is an island located off the coast of French Guiana. It was a notorious French penal colony until 1946. Devil's Island is a small rocky islet in the Atlantic Ocean just off the northern coast of French Guiana whose n and finding out later that they were only seagulls. She says that to her they would always be fantastic birds.

3 Reception

"Harold and Maude" would be a strange film no matter when it was released, but, even in the excessive cinema of the 1970s, it was stridently out of step with mainstream cinema. It was a commercial failure when it was released and divided critics. Most audiences could focus on little more than the idea of romantic love between the old and young (though even mouth to mouth kissing is not actually shown in the movie). Its cult appeal lay in its black comedic suicides and the alienation Bud Cort conveyed.

4 Cast

• Marjorie Chardin (Maude): Ruth GordonRuth Gordon ( October 30, 1896 August 28, 1985) was an American actress and screenwriter who was perhaps best known for her role as the oversolicitous neighbor in Roman Polanski's adaptation of Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby for which she won the 1968
• Harold Chasen: Bud CortBud Cort an American actor, was born Walter Edward Cox on March 29, 1948 in New Rochelle, New York. Some sources say Cort was born in 1950. He grew up in Rye, NY, with his mother Alma Mary Cort (whose maiden name he would later use professionally), his fa
• Mrs. Chasen: Vivian Pickles
• Glaucus: Cyril CusackCyril Cusack ( 26 November 1910 7 October 1993) was an Irish actor, born in Natal, South Africa. He was the son of a sergeant in the mounted police and an actress. His parents separated when he was young and his mother took him to England, and then to Ire
• Uncle Victor: Charles Tyner
• Sunshine Doré: Ellen Geer
• Priest: Eric Christmas
• Psychiatrist: G. Wood
• Candy Gulf: Judy Engles
• Edith Phern: Shari Summers
• Motorcycle Officer: Tom SkerrittTom Skerritt (born August 25, 1933) is an American actor. Skerritt was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA, and made his television debut in 1962 in Combat . He made his film debut in War Hunt ( 1962). His most notable film appearances include M A S H ( 1970) (as M. Borman)