Classic 70s Movie: “Harold and Maude”

September is Classic 70s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from Thomas Wüstemann.

Movie Title: Harold and Maude

Year: 1971

Writer: Colin Higgins

Lead Actors: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort

Director: Hal Ashby

IMDB Plot Summary: Young, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral.

Why I Think This Is A Classic 70s Movie: Not that I know much about the 70s, and even less about the USA of that period. But when I think of the spirit of early 70s movies, this pretty much nails it down.

We have the dividing of the classes, as Harold is the depressed infant of a wealthy family. We have constant references to war, most notable in the character of Harold’s uncle, the general, most beautiful in the match cut from a flowery meadow, with all the same white flowers, to a grave yard for veterans, impressively stating the conformity of the people.

And in the end it all comes down to the great topic of the late 60s, early 70s: gaining individual freedom.

In this regard, “Harold and Maude” takes a provocative approach, as it finds this freedom in the love to an elderly woman, a motive which builds the exact opposite to the freedom loving but youth glorifying hippie movement.

In that sense, it’s one of the most innovative RomComs of all times, setting no boundaries in a mainstream movie, and was no doubt only possible to make in the 70s.

My Favorite Moment In The Movie: When Harold decides to marry Maude, he is confronted with three relatives or associates of the family. His uncle — a general in the army -, his psychiatrist and a priest. Each one of them is having a picture on the wall in his back — each corresponding to the intellectual world of its owner. There’s Richard Nixon on the wall of the general, Sigmund Freud on the wall of the psychiatrist and the pope himself on the wall of the priest. The three are addressing the camera, and therefore in the same way Harold and the audience, as we intercut among them and are moving closer with the camera, ending on the angry face of the priest.

It is a strong moment of breaking the 4th wall, while at the same time staying in the scene. This is already indicated in the script, where the general is described as “addressing the camera as the President addresses the nation”.

In the script, the scene ends with Harold asking: “But you didn’t ask if I love her”. In that way, while talking to his mother, also addressing the audience. A climax that didn’t make it into the movie.

My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie:

PRIEST: Ah! There you are, madam. Were not you the lady who drove my car off yesterday?
MAUDE: Was that the one with the St. Christopher medal on the dashboard?
PRIEST: Yes.
MAUDE: Then I suppose it was me. Get in, Harold.

Harold decides not to argue. He gets in.

PRIEST: Were you also the one who painted the statues?
MAUDE (brightly): Oh, yes. How did you like that?
PRIEST: Well, I didn’t.
MAUDE: Oh, don’t be too discouraged. For aesthetic appreciation — always a little time.

[I would like to state a second quote, which, sadly, is not in the movie, but in the original script.]

Harold visits sculptor Glaucus in his studio.

GLAUCUS: Tell me, what do you see?
HAROLD: A block of ice.
GLAUCUS: Exactly! Now, ask me what I see.
HAROLD: What do you see?
GLAUCUS: I see the eternal goddess of beauty and love. I see Aphrodite. The consummate woman. Full of warmth and fire. Frozen. (to the ice) And it is I who shall set you free.

He takes a small pneumatic drill and attacks the ice. He makes a little incision, puts it down, and steps back to observe. He wipes his brow.

GLAUCUS: Each morning I am delivered of a new block of ice. Each evening my eyes grow weary, my hands hang heavy, and I am swept down Lethe to slumber — (slowly with feeling) — while my goddess, half-born, drips away — unseen, unsung, and unknown.

Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie: I’m referring to the script by Collin Higgins one more time, which is, by the way, wonderfully written. The 70s were a time when directing on the page was more common than today. You got camera angles, shot by shot descriptions, and so on. And a lot of that got translated into the movie. Most notably the continuous first shot of the title sequence and the confrontation with the three associates, as mentioned above. But many times the movie goes a different way.

Whereas the script shows some scenes in long, elaborate structures, the movie often condenses these scenes to short music numbers, backed of course by the soundtrack of Cat Stevens, and, by that, giving it a more lighthearted feel.

There are several moments of breaking the 4th wall. Besides the scene which I already described in its entirety, Harold always looks into the camera, after each faked suicide attempt. By that he builds tension between him and the audience, making them his accomplice. All these scenes and camera gazes are rather subtle and could as well be part of the scene. But there’s one moment when Harold enters the room after faking a suicide in front of a marriage candidate. When she collapses in shock of the just seen, Harold gazes into the camera and smiles. He surely is demonstrating his miserable life to the audience.

Thanks, Thomas! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!

We already have a set of 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on 70s Movies.

The schedule for posts in this series and the volunteers below [I have put in bold those who have already sent their guest post to me]:

A2Jason: Taxi Driver
Rob Bell: The Friends of Eddie Coyle
chriscaleo: Being There
cilly247: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
cschillig: The Exorcist or Halloween
Markham Cook: Jaws
Jason Cuthbert: Taxi Driver
Kalen Deremo: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Mark Furney: McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Ryan Gilmore: The Godfather, Part I and Part II
pgronk: Chinatown
John Henderson: Smokey and the Bandit
Steve Huerta: The Getaway
Jacob Holmes-Brown: Alien
Zach Jansen: Dog Day Afternoon
Will King: Colossus: The Forbin Project
LateNightDoom: What’s Up, Doc?
Lynn: Carrie
maveric1974: Apocalypse Now
Karla McNeese: Murder by Death
Debbie Moon: Three Days of the Condor
N D: Network
Ivan Oski: Solaris
Daryl Powell: Rocky
Rahul Prasad: Apocalypse Now
Jon Raymond: The Conversation
Eric Rodriguez: Logan’s Run
Greg Scharpf: Shampoo
Arnaud Talaia: All the President’s Men
Barbara Thomas: Young Frankenstein
rich_trenholm: The Man With a Golden Gun
Mark Twain: The Parallax View
Liz Warner: Midnight Express
Michael Waters: The Sting
Thomas Wüstemann: Harold and Maude
Turk187: Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Bretton Zinger: Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope

If you have volunteered, please email your posts to me by September 10. Thanks!

Thanks to all of you for your participation in this project, creating a resource for writers, movies we should all watch to help learn the craft of screenwriting!

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