Harold and Maude is a 1971 American romantic black comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby and released by Paramount Pictures. It incorporates elements of dark humour and existentialist drama. The plot follows the exploits of Harold Chasen (Bud Cort), a young man who is obsessed with death, and who rejects the life his detached mother (Vivian Pickles) prescribes for him. Harold develops a friendship, and eventual romantic relationship, with 79-year-old Maude (Ruth Gordon) who teaches Harold about the importance of living life to its fullest.
The screenplay by Colin Higgins began as his master's thesis for film school. Filming took place in and around San Francisco and San Mateo, California, with locations including both Holy Cross Cemetery and Golden Gate National Cemetery, the ruins of the Sutro Baths, Mori Point, and Rosecourt Mansion in Hillsborough, California.
Critically and commercially unsuccessful when first released, the film eventually developed a cult following, and first made a profit in 1983. The film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1997, and was ranked number 45 on the American Film Institute list of 100 funniest films of all time in 2000. The Criterion Collection released a special-edition Blu-ray and DVD in 2012.
Plot Harold Chasen is a young man obsessed with death. He stages elaborate fake suicides, attends funerals (usually for people that he does not know), and drives a hearse, all to the chagrin of his self-obsessed, wealthy socialite mother. His mother sends Harold to a psychoanalyst, sets him up with blind dates, and buys him a luxury car, all schemes he subverts in his own way.
Harold meets 79-year-old Maude one day while at a random stranger's funeral Mass, and discovers that they share a hobby. Harold is entranced by Maude's quirky outlook on life, which is bright and delightfully carefree in contrast to his morbid demeanor. Maude lives in a decommissioned railroad car and thinks nothing of breaking the law; she is quite skilled at stealing cars and will swiftly uproot an ailing tree in a city sidewalk to replant it in the forest. She and Harold form a bond and Maude shows Harold the pleasures of art and music (including how to play the banjo), and teaches him how to make "the most of his time on earth."
Meanwhile, Harold's mother is determined, against Harold's wishes, to find him a wife. One by one, Harold frightens and horrifies each of his appointed computer dates, by appearing to commit gruesome acts, including self-immolation, self-mutilation, and seppuku. His mother attempts to enlist him in the military by sending Harold to his uncle, who lost an arm serving under General MacArthur in World War II, but Harold deters the recruitment by staging a scene where Maude poses as a pacifist protester and Harold seemingly murders her out of militarist fanaticism.
As Harold and Maude grow closer, their friendship blossoms into a romance. Holding her hand, Harold discovers a number tattooed on her forearm, indicating Maude survived the Nazi death camps. Harold announces that he will marry Maude, resulting in disgusted outbursts from his family, analyst, and priest. Unbeknownst to Harold, Maude has been planning to end her own life on her 80th birthday. (Although she had actually mentioned her plan twice, early on.) Maude's birthday arrives, and Harold throws a surprise party for her. As the pair dance, Maude tells Harold that she "couldn't imagine a lovelier farewell." When Maude reveals that she has taken an overdose of sleeping pills and will be dead by midnight, Harold rushes Maude to the hospital. However, she succumbs to the pill overdose. Devastated after learning of Maude's death, Harold speeds down a country road and sends his Jaguar hearse off a seaside cliff, appearing to have committed suicide. Following the crash, Harold is revealed to be standing calmly atop the cliff, holding his banjo. After gazing down at the wreckage, he plucks the banjo strings and dances away to "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out".
Cast Ruth Gordon as Dame Marjorie "Maude" Chardin, a 79-year-old free spirit. Maude believes in living each day to the fullest, and "trying something new every day". Her view of life is so joyful that, true to the film's motif, it crosses a blurred, shifting line into a carefree attitude toward death as well. Little is known of her past, though it is revealed that in her youth, she was a radical suffragette who fought off police constables with her umbrella, was once married, lived in pre-war Vienna, and has a Nazi concentration camp tattoo on her arm. Bud Cort as Harold Parker Chasen, a young man who is obsessed with death. He drives a hearse, attends funerals of strangers and stages elaborate fake suicides. Through meeting and falling in love with Maude, he discovers joy in living for the first time. Vivian Pickles as Mrs. Chasen, Harold's opulently wealthy mother, is controlling, snooty and seemingly incapable of affection. Hoping to force him into respectability, Mrs. Chasen replaces Harold's beloved hearse with a Jaguar E-Type (which he then converts to a miniature hearse), and sets up several blind dates (more accurately, "bride interviews") for her son. Cyril Cusack as Glaucus, the sculptor who makes an ice statue of Maude and lends them his tools to transport a tree Charles Tyner as General Victor Ball, Harold's uncle who lost an arm in the war and now pulls a hidden cord to make his wire prosthetic "salute". At Mrs. Chasen's request, he attempts to prepare Harold to join the armed forces. The effort is thwarted by a planned stunt in which Harold appears to "kill" Maude. Ellen Geer as Sunshine Doré, Harold's third blind date who performs an impromptu rendition of Juliet's death scene after his apparent suicide Eric Christmas as the priest G. Wood as Harold's psychiatrist Judy Engles as Candy Gulf, Harold's first blind date, alarmed when he apparently sets himself on fire Shari Summers as Edith Phern, Harold's second blind date, astonished when he apparently cuts off his own hand Tom Skerritt (credited as "M. Borman") as the motorcycle officer who twice stops Maude and Harold, ultimately losing his ride to the pair.
Director Hal Ashby appears in an uncredited cameo, seen at a penny arcade watching a model train at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
Production UCLA film school student Colin Higgins wrote Harold and Maude as his master's thesis. While working as producer Edward Lewis's pool boy, Higgins showed the script to Lewis's wife, Mildred. Mildred was so impressed that she got Edward to give it to Stanley Jaffe at Paramount. Higgins sold the script with the understanding that he would direct the film, but he was told he was not ready after tests he shot proved unsatisfactory to the studio heads. Ashby said that he would only commit to directing the film after getting Higgins' blessing, and took Higgins on as a co-producer so he could watch and learn from him on the set. Higgins says he originally thought of the story as a play. It then became a 20-minute thesis while at film school. The film script was turned into a novel and then a play, which ran for several years in Paris.
Ashby felt that the actress portraying Maude should ideally be European and his list of possible actresses included Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, Gladys Cooper, and Celia Johnson, as well as Lotte Lenya, Luise Rainer, Pola Negri, Minta Durfee, and Agatha Christie. Ruth Gordon indicated that in addition, she heard that Edwige Feuillère, Elisabeth Bergner, Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock, and Dorothy Stickney had been considered.
For Harold, in addition to Bud Cort, Ashby considered all promising unknowns, Richard Dreyfuss, Bob Balaban, and John Savage. Also on his list were John Rubinstein, for whom Higgins had written the part, and then-up-and-coming British singer Elton John, whom Ashby had seen live and hoped would also do the music. Anne Brebner, the casting director, was almost cast as Harold's mother, when Vivian Pickles was briefly unable to do the role.
Principal photography began in late December 1970 and concluded in mid-March 1971. Filming took place in and around San Francisco and San Mateo, California, including locations such as Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma (Harold catches his first glimpse of Maude at a funeral), St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Palo Alto (the church funeral where Harold first meets Maude), Oyster Point Boulevard in South San Francisco (Maude's railroad car), an abandoned warehouse at the Southern Pacific Railroad Bayshore Yard in Brisbane (Glaucus' studio), Half Moon Bay, Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, Redwood City (Maude rescues a street tree to be transplanted to the forest), the Dumbarton Bridge (a motorcycle officer pulls over Harold and Maude on their way to replant the tree), Sutro Heights Park (Harold rides in a limousine and walks with Uncle Victor) and the ruins of the Sutro Baths (Maude poses as a protester and later falls through a hole to her apparent death) in San Francisco, the Emeryville mudflats (Harold discovers Maude's concentration camp tattoo), Oakland, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (amusement park), Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame (Maude is hospitalized), and Mori Point in Pacifica (Harold drives his car off a cliff). For the Chasen mansion, scenes were shot at Rosecourt Mansion in Hillsborough, California. According to Ashby, there were some issues securing the location because Otto Preminger had previously filmed in the Hillsborough area and had antagonized the local residents.
Novelization A novelization by Higgins was released alongside the film; they differ in several respects, including the film's omission of certain scenes and characters. Other different details include the novel's version of Maude having white hair (unlike Gordon in the film) and introducing herself as "the Countess Mathilde Chardin", a different name and title than used in the film. In the novel, Maude's home is characterized as a "cottage" (unlike the retired railroad car Maude inhabits in the film), and she and Harold briefly interact with Maude's neighbor, Madame Arouet, who is not present in the film. The novel includes an additional scene during the tree-planting expedition where Maude leads Harold in climbing to the top of a very tall pine tree to show him the view over the forest from near its summit.
Release Harold and Maude was released with a vague, text-only poster and very little marketing. The initial release underperformed at the box office, but it gradually found success in repertory theatres and recouped its costs after several years. Danny Peary, author of the Cult Movies series, referred to the film as "[o]ne of the runaway cult favorites of the seventies" and commented that it "[broke] longevity records in cities like Detroit, Montreal, and most memorably, Minneapolis, where residents actually picketed the Westgate Theater trying to get management to replace the picture after a consecutive three-year run."
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