Home > Writing > Harold and Maude: An Appreciation

Originally written for a film studies essay, so excuse the slide into pretension. This is possibly my favourite film, so here's a few reasons why it might be yours too...

Harold and Maude, directed by Hal Ashby, is a blackly comic love story of love transcending age barriers, with a satirical swipe at the 'values' of patriotism, war and social pretensions. Many formal elements of the film contribute to its distinctive mood.

The film is structured entirely from the viewpoint of its central figure, Harold (Bud Cort) - a suicide-obsessed young man left impotent by overbearing wealth and a stifling household - and charts a voyage of discovery during a single week in his life. To confirm this, he is the only character present in every scene; even when he is not onscreen his presence is clearly noted, either in the background or when other characters address him directly in point-of-view shots. In this sense, it is very much his film over any other character. Everything we see in the film is effectively through his eyes, with the inner motives of the other characters left deliberately ambiguous. Even Harold himself remains something of an enigma for most of the film, presented as a perplexing mixture of homicidal glee and profound melancholy.

Much of the appeal and narrative drive felt by the audience comes from the deliberate refusal to bridge the two conflicted halves of Harold's character. He is a lost soul in a world he largely misunderstands or is baffled with, and the limited exposition and storytelling underscores this. For instance, Harold clearly has no father - his mother (Vivian Pickles) speaks of him briefly in the past tense - yet the time and circumstances of his presumed demise are not even vaguely addressed. In narrative terms, all that matters is that he is absent, so that is all the script conveys.

The first 'act' of the film is composed of short black comedic sketches on death and war-the film's two recurring themes-with an extremely loose linking narrative. These serve no other function but to leisurely introduce Harold and engage the audience with his apparent contractions. With this groundwork in place, the second 'act' introduces Maude (Ruth Gordon) - a freewheeling 79 year old firebrand with a liberal streak. This section covers the development of their relationship to eventual love, which is validated by Harold's confession of his past at its midpoint. This in itself serves as a partial conclusion to 'act one', allowing the story to move forward. The third 'act' concerns the dissolution of the relationship, with both Harold's draft dodging and Maude's suicide, which is subtly alluded to in her very first dialogue exchanges. The conclusion of the film is Harold's exorcism of this tacit rejection, with a glimmer of hope for his future and an affirmation of Maude's changes to his personality.

The transparent three-act structure is marked by Harold's three 'dates', arranged at his mother's behest. Whilst superficially they are self-contained sketches, they serve as important narrative pivots: The first cuts short Harold's first proper meeting with Maude, the second provokes his mother's vengeful decision to enlist him into the army and third is the effective punchline, taking place after Harold's love for Maude is affirmed, featuring a girl lost to a similar world of fantasy and delusion. Whereas the previous victims are horrified by Harold's morbid nature, the last seems positively elated by it, much to his inevitable chagrin.

The film's production is understated, befitting its character-based format. The lighting is generally simple and naturalistic, largely shot during daylight with minimal artificial enhancements. The handful of night scenes are largely confined to indoor settings, though it can be noted that the 'natural' nighttime lighting is generally too flat and overlit to be completely convincing.

With the exception of the opening fade-in, the film features no optical transitions whatsoever, with the stark, abrupt cuts between scenes giving it a deliberately disjointed quality. The only apparent visual 'tricks' of note are the sequences of the fireworks blurring into soft-focus abstraction, and the inserted freeze-frame of Harold's car floating in mid air as it topples off the cliff at the end of the film. The former symbolises the euphoria of the characters' love, acting as a visual euphemism for the unseen sex scene. The latter is another piece of visual punctuation, a momentary break from the physics of reality to allow the audience to feel the impact of the apparent accident, and to grimly underscore the inevitability of fate for both vehicle and presumed occupant*. The fact that the engine sound effect is heard throughout grounds the scene in reality, preventing it from becoming dreamlike or fantastical.

In the absence of visual transitions, it is often the music that gives the editing vital cohesion. Frequently dialogue drifts into inaudibility as a scene nears the end, segueing into a musical cue. Not only do the moods of these ersatz 'bridges' provide the audience with a sense of conclusion for the current themes in the story, they frequently feature lyrics that relate directly to the situations. For example, when Harold wanders looking for a new car, the vocals inform us that he is literally "miles from nowhere". In this sense, the storytelling is kept varied and dynamic, freeing the brisk comic dialogue of the necessity for exposition and transition. Scenes reach their punchlines and are abandoned without hesitation, requiring the musical motifs to maintain coherent mood and structure.

It is this use of jump cuts and non-linear storytelling that provides so much of the humour and pathos. When Harold's mother announces she has decided he should marry, the scene cuts instantly to a church, and the film's humour is sufficiently black to fool us into believing she has enforced her will that stringently. Similarly for Maude's death, Ashby crosscuts consecutive scenes from two parallel threads: The final hours of the night of her passing and Harold's cathartic reaction the following morning. The contrast between the slow, almost static former is pronounced against the speeding cars of the present sequences. The entire sequence is a self-contained vignette constructed around Cat Stevens' Trouble track, with the structure of the song providing much of the grammar of the editing. In sequences like this, the film manages to predate the invention of music video by a decade.

Unusually for its time, the film features no formal score. Instead, the music is excerpted from a selection of Cat Stevens tracks, many of which seem to have directly structured the action. The opening of the film features Harold playing one of these singles on a record player, perhaps suggesting that the score is contained in his head, or at the very least affirming it as part of his collective view. The only other music heard is a brief selection of classical pieces-all played onscreen on instruments or heard as characters play records - and, in a unique exception, a military-style drumbeat heard as Harold's mother announces her plan to enlist him. The effect of this is two-fold, magnifying his perceived defiance and underscoring the life-changing importance of this development. It is also interesting to note that the music cue is very similar to the ambient sounds heard during Harold's earlier visit to an army base, perhaps suggesting a subliminal flashback or reference point.

The film is shot entirely on location, using largely static cameras. Ashby uses the lack of movement to reflect the regiment and constriction of Harold's world, using a strong linear and symmetrical element to his compositions. This is used to dual effect: For example, when Harold fakes suicide to a disinterested mother at the pool, the composition is utterly symmetrical, with his 'corpse' providing a sense of the irony and anarchy to a deliberately twee backdrop. To enhance the incongruity, the scene is scored with the gently tinkling strains of a Rachmaninov composition, the apparent epitome of social grace and class. Similarly, in many of the scenes between Harold and his mother, the compositions use props or architectural features to bisect the image - with each character occupying a different half -such as during the dating questionnaire scene, where a doorframe splits down the exact middle of the image. A subtle underscore to the relationships, touches like this add to the feeling of territory and separation that dominates many of the film's preoccupations.

There are many wry asides to the film, most notably in Harold's visits to his psychiatrist, with the pair sitting respectively in two identical armchairs with mirrored posture. To add to the subliminal absurdity, the pair even wear identical suits and ties, polarised in terms of viewpoint and personality, but viewed as equals by the unindoctrinated. Yet again, the subtle undermining of authority is revisited.

The most overt undermining of authority takes place with Harold's ruse to prevent his army officer Uncle Victor from enlisting him. In some ways it is one of the film's cruellest moments. Harold first revels in Victor's atrocious justification in aggressive foreign policy: "World War II gave us the ballpoint pen," before gradually descending into manic communist paranoia and enemy bloodlust. On one level it is an obvious farce situation, with Victor left disturbed by the inversion of the values he holds dear, suddenly reduced to a plaintive voice pleaing for tolerance! On one level it offers some of the film's funniest moments, yet one is left pitying Victor as he witnesses the effective destruction of his personal fantasy world. Whereas Harold is coaxed from his reclusive existence, this already clearly disturbed man is violently forced to hold a distorted mirror to himself, his value system cruelly torn apart. Amidst the carefree nature of the film's other pranks, this sequence has a harshness that lingers perhaps more than its makers intended.

One of the most singularly interesting scenes is the sunset discussion of Maude's past. As she speaks with Harold generally, he notices a tattooed number on her wrist, glimpsed once and only fleetingly. Seemingly a subtle aside, it is a final clue that effectively ties up the random facts previously offered about her past and adds devastating weight to her motivations. For all her previous exploits as a figure of fun and anarchy, she is suddenly shown to be human and vulnerable, irrevocably damaged by her past, a virtual mirror image of Harold. The inevitable and expected question never comes, with Maude beginning to relate a story of a prisoner on Devil's Island comforted by beautiful birds, in reality mere seagulls. As a flock of gulls swells in the air above them, Maude adds wistfully: "To me they will always be beautiful birds." Thus Maude's past is not exposed, but confided, and a final subtle word makes it clear that the story is hers, the oblique answer to an uncomfortable question. Thus the film succeeds in treating its subject matter with conviction and sensitivity without compromising its overall tone. It also succeeds in admonishing Maude's earlier outrageous parody of a peace protestor, making it clear that the satire of the film is grounded in conscience.

This is notable both as the turning point that confirms Maude as more than an elderly eccentric and confirms Harold's choice of life over the pretence of death. Choice is a recurring theme throughout the film. The computer dates are literal choices; the rebellion from enlistment represents choice through rejection, as does Harold's eventual stand against his mother, understated though it is. Power and authority are concepts both Harold and Maude feel no affinity for and perhaps therein lies their kinship. By comparison, every other character in the film has some desire for authority or status; the lofty psychiatrist, the salacious priest acting as surrogate father, even the meekest of the computer dates proudly cites that she "types up the schedules for the whole trucking fleet." The lack of scope and imagination these desires are quietly condemned - a relatively small concern for the film, but one that holds up a mirror to the viewer and probably leaves one with unpleasant parallels in doing so.

Ultimately, much of the film is played in deliberate caricature, with the exception of its two central figures, who are contrasted in their utter conviction. Harold's mother and his jingoistic Uncle Victor may seem like cartoon fools, but that is clearly the way Harold sees them, so it becomes appropriate that we view them through his prejudices. It succeeds as both an aptly observed character piece and an affirmation of the power of personal freedom and conscience over faceless allegiance and regiment. Like it says: "If you want to be free, be free!"

* Reportedly the freeze frame was also a device to cover limited camera coverage. The sequence was apparently covered on multiple cameras, but only one usable angle was exposed.

Harold and Maude is available on DVD from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk