Harold and Maude
Born in Utah in 1929, Hal Ashby endured a turbulent and often dislocated youth, marked by restlessness and a sense of displacement. Leaving school early with a drive to carve his own path, he headed westward, taking odd jobs and pursuing unpaid gigs in Hollywood. It was in the editing room that Ashby found his calling, apprenticing under filmmaker Norman Jewison. Their collaboration on In the Heat of the Night (1967) earned Ashby an Academy Award, a crucial step in his career. Jewison, recognizing the young editor’s distinctively shaggy sensibility and quiet moral vision, encouraged him to step behind the camera, confident he was uniquely suited to the rapidly shifting landscape of American cinema.
Ashby’s directorial debut, The Landlord (1970), was a racially charged satire of class and gentrification. Although it struggled at the box office, the film introduced Ashby’s singular voice – disheveled, lyrical, and deeply human. It also paved the way for Harold and Maude (1971), a project as mismatched and miraculous as the odd couple at its heart. Adapted from screenwriter Colin Higgins’ unproduced master’s thesis at UCLA, Harold and Maude tells the improbable story of a death-obsessed teenager and a life-loving octogenarian who unexpectedly fall into a romantic relationship. While the premise, on paper, may seem ripe for provocation, Ashby’s direction imbues the narrative with surprising grace.
In the harsh climate of early 1970s American cinema, few films captured the offbeat clarity and soulful defiance of Harold and Maude. The film stands as a living, breathing act of cinematic poetry – melancholic in tone, anarchic in structure, and euphoric in its declaration of love. It remains an extraordinary object: part comedy, part requiem, and part flower-child-era fairy tale. At its heart, it carries the fingerprints of a director who, like his characters, lived on the margins, constantly searching for transcendence in the small, the discarded, and the misunderstood.
Set against an overcast San Francisco, filtered through muted tones and soft shadows, Harold and Maude opens with an unsettling ritual: a teenager in a suit and tie meticulously prepares to hang himself. The camera glides through his movements – lighting candles, placing a record on the turntable – until the body drops, but what initially appears to suggest a suicide is soon revealed as choreographed theater. The young man, Harold Chasen (Bud Cort), morbidly fixated on death, stages elaborate faux suicides to provoke his distant, image-conscious mother. His rebellion takes many forms, from self-immolation to hara-kiri.
Isolated in a sterile environment of privilege and control, Harold seeks connection by attending the funerals of strangers. It is at one of these funerals that he encounters Maude, a 79-year-old woman whose zest for life defies societal convention. With a carefree devotion to new experiences, she is a vibrant force of nature, embracing each moment with unrestrained joy. Ruth Gordon’s portrayal infuses Maude with mischief: stealing cars with cheerful abandon, living in a converted railway carriage filled with art and memories, and drifting through life unburdened by rules or regret.
Their initial meeting does not immediately ignite change, but it opens a door – less a courtship than a slow, improbable alignment of spirits. Their shared moments accumulate the texture of a quiet revolution. Together, they replant a tree, sing on a whim, somersault in the grass, and share a sunrise over the bay. They wander through a field of wildflowers in the shadow of a military cemetery, finding beauty in their diversity. Eventually, Maude reveals her ultimate plan, shared with a gentle certainty: On the night of her 80th birthday, after a day spent dancing and affirming their love, she has calmy taken an overdose of sleeping pills.
In the hands of a lesser director, this could have played as mere provocation or quirk. But under Ashby’s direction, Maude’s death is neither impulsive nor melancholic. Instead, it is simply the last, unwavering expression of a life lived entirely on her own terms. The film closes not in despair but with a quiet sense of liberation. The final image – Harold, standing alone on a hillside, silhouetted against a bright blue sky, strumming a banjo as he skips into the distance – offers a moment of pure, unburdened joy, suspended within the grief.
Beneath its whimsical surface, the film carries a profound message: life only becomes meaningful when it is lived authentically, rebelliously, and with deep compassion. Ashby does not ridicule Harold’s despair nor trivialize Maude’s age. Rather, he positions them as conspirators in an emotional escape – two outsiders who find in each other shelter, lessons, and a mirror. In a culture numbed by ritual and obsessed with control, Harold and Maude celebrates improvisation, vulnerability, and the urgent imperative to seize one’s finite hours. Its humor is disarming, its sadness enveloping, and its love story, far from grotesque, becomes transcendent.
The production of Harold and Maude was as quietly turbulent as the film itself. Paramount studio executives struggled with how to market a romantic comedy about intergenerational intimacy and suicidal tendencies. Cort brought a delicate, Chaplin-esque precision to Harold, while Gordon – fresh off her Oscar-winning turn in Rosemary’s Baby – imbued Maude with warmth, with neither performance conforming to conventional archetypes. Ashby worked meticulously, trimming excess sentiment and polishing the film into something austere yet tender. But despite its deeply personal nature, the film’s tonal instability confused many viewers, and its reception was modest.
Over time, however, Harold and Maude has grown into a cult classic, finding a devoted following among college students in the 1980s and becoming a precursor to the quirky sincerity of filmmakers like Wes Anderson. Once dismissed as too eccentric, it is now recognized as a foundational work in American independent cinema, a template for romantic outsiders. Its musical motifs, editing rhythms, and color palette have influenced future generations, and its central idea – that love, in any form and at any age, can be transformative – remains progressively radical, a timeless testament to the courage required to live authentically in a world that often demands conformity.