daoldiges I didn't know where this film was going when I first started watching but am so happy that I went along for the ride. The main characters darkness originally seemed very far from my own reality and experiences but as the story progressed I realized that our paths may not be that far apart, it's just that each of us chooses to express ourselves differently. Of course Ruth Gordon is excellently cast for this role and together her and Bud Court make a dynamic and engaging pair. Vivian Pickles as the mother is also pitch-perfect. The Cat Stevens score is really a third character in this film as it represents to me a perfect pairing of music/lyrics and story. I spoke with some other viewers who found this film dark and depressing, but to me it was a joyful and life-affirming work of art that I suspect with linger within me for a very long time.

Hitchcoc Being a Minnesotan, we know that this movie ran consecutively for over two years at the Westgate in Edina, 1957 performances. It drove the locals crazy. They wanted another movie to replace it. But on both the first and second anniversaries, Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort came to the showings. The theater is long gone, but I will long remember finally seeing it. This is the story of a young man obsessed with death. He stages phony suicide attempts which drives his mother crazy. One day, he meets an elderly woman, Maude, played by Ruth Gordon. The begin to have a relationship. At first it is just a friendship, but then it is taken to the next step. This drives his family and others crazy, but they are happy with the way things are. This film defies description, but is thoroughly enjoyable.

sharky_55 What makes Ruth Gordon's Maude so surprisingly enchanting is that we don't expect a seventy nine year old to be so full of life, so vivacious, so contrary to her appearance. Of course it seems trite these days because every indie film has copied the same mantra into sexier, younger characters that go about life-affirming journeys into the vast unknown. It works and feels natural here because she doesn't have that infinite lifetime to look forward to, that youthful aimlessness; she's tethered by her age and instead of letting it define her, she makes the most of her time left. Opposing her is Cort's Harold. They both embrace death but with different attitudes - it is ironic that it is the nineteen year old who feels so suffocated by the idea of dying one day as opposed to the seventy nine year old. They are fascinated by it, but for different reasons. Cort is a great casting; gangly, impossibly tall, like an overgrown teenager who hasn't quite physically matured but wants to seem so. During the therapist sessions the formal dress is a mirror image itself, and he initially has the same lofty, cross-legged pose. His blank, unblinking face seems to be deathly close to collapse at any moment; perhaps it is an extra layer of ghostly white make-up (Roy Andersson recalls a similar technique). His deadpan approach is crucial to the dark humour of his 'deaths' that become a running gag. Some of these unfold with an almost magical realism behind them - a figure outside in white cloth sets fire to itself, and Harold walks into the frame the next second. And the same goes for the way he re-appears on the cliff in the ending. The others are hilarious because of the non-reaction of his mother, whom has long become accustomed to these pranks and does not show the emotion that Harold wishes she shows. Her dismissive chuckles as she fills in his dating profile and waves off his shooting in the head, and the funniest reveal of them all, as she gets into her rhythm for her daily laps in the pool, and completely ignores the floating, lifeless body of Harold as if it were just a fallen leaf. Or perhaps the opposite, the hysterical over- reaction from the last date, a thespian who marvels at Harold's act of seppuku, and falls into her own dramatic rendition of the Romeo & Juliet climax. Viewing it from a modern lens Maude's hippie philosophy seems a little less inspiring, and a little more exasperating, especially as she circles around and then steals the police motorcycle. But isn't that sort of perspective exactly what she is trying to combat? Harold admits a desire to fit into society, and if not, he might as well die because there is little else to treasure in this short, miserable existence. Maude accepts that same fleeting view, but pushes him to find that spark and will to live and not waste anymore of his young life moping around because death might be around the corner anyway (and she shows this by throwing away the necklace). And so, farewelling him at eighty, she teaches him the most important lesson of them all. The constant Cat Williams is a little coy, but it's perfect for that soft banjo solo that symbolises a revitalised outlook on life and a goodbye to that former obsessive morbidity (the hearse).

Chris Allen The most indie-esque film to come out of the '70s that I have seen, "Harold and Maude" wallows in irreverence. Suicide is played around with as a theme - never trivialised, but used frequently as a source of dark humour. The unlikely relationship between the titular characters is remarkably sweet and loving, if a little rushed, and the jaunty folk soundtrack uplifts the mood despite the heavy themes. The script is superlative, counterbalancing all the incidents of gore; the film almost comes across as a pre-emptive "Breakfast Club" for the "Fight Club" generation. Desperation and listlessness weighs Harold down, until Maude lightens his existence by showing him how to live for once. Her bubbly persona is the yang to his yin, and the film's quirky comedy cheers the audience as well as Harold with its subtlety. A true unexpected pleasure, "Harold and Maude" is surprising and charming throughout, with enough dark substance to mark it out as truly unique.