The 1970s was a peak decade for innovation and creativity in filmmaking. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols and Francis Ford Coppola are cited as some of the most significant auteurs of the time, but Hal Ashby is one director whose name seems to get mentioned less and less as the years go on. Looking back, he’s someone whose work was a huge part of the Hollywood Renaissance.
Ashby died in 1988, but he directed some of the era’s best dark comedies and satires, including Shampoo and Being There. He was also at the helm of one of the decade’s most controversial romances: Harold and Maude.
The film is now available for free on streaming services such as Pluto TV and Kanopy this month, and it makes for a great, unconventional Valentine’s Day watch. If you’ve never seen it (or if it imprinted on you at a younger age and you’ve been hoping for a re-watch), now is a great time to catch the film — which often disappears from streaming services as quickly as it arrives. The film’s lead actor, Bud Cort, died this week at age 77, adding another reason to watch.
Harold and Maude stars Cort and Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon as a young man and the elderly woman he falls in love with. Harold, 20, is rich and still lives at home. Maude is 79, of modest means and lives in a boxcar. Obsessed with death, Harold often stages elaborate suicide attempts: hanging, self-immolation, you name it. And while these attempts look realistic, his mother’s unimpressed reactions to them are the definition of deadpan comedy.
But even acknowledging the film’s underlying dark humor, it’s hard to imagine a movie like this could get made by a mainstream studio these days. Critics didn’t really like the film back in 1971 either — “Creepy and off-putting” is how the New York Times described the two lead performances — but over the years it’s developed a cult fanbase thanks to long-running engagements at second-run theaters.
Harold meets Maude at the funeral of someone neither of them actually knows. Soon, they become inseparable. While Harold’s outlook on life and death is all gloom, Maude’s fascination with death actually provides her with a reason to live. (Harold spots a number tattooed on her forearm that subtly alludes to her surviving a concentration camp.) Despite certain ideas or performances that might be considered off-putting for many, Harold and Maude is a celebration of life, an existential drama that balances the heavy with the light, and a movie that exemplifies the era in which it was made. That Cat Stevens soundtrack!
While the central relationship itself is unconventional, the film feels less about a search for real romantic love and more like a reminder of how life is meant to be lived on one’s own terms. As Maude tells Harold, “Everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You just can’t let the world judge you too much.”
Harold and Maude is available now on Pluto TV and Kanopy.
