When The World Was Fresh And Young And All Things Were Possible (Or So We Thought)-Ah, To Be Young Was Very Heaven-Ans Cat Steven’s Soundtrack Too-Ruth Gordon And Bud Cort’s “Harold And Maude” (1971)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

Harold and Maude, starring Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, 1971

I have commented in the past, and a number of other commentators have as well most notably or publicly the late great Gonzo journalist Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, on when the 1960s ended. Meaning not 1969 or 1970 however you count decade-endings but the spirit, the wildness ride of the 1960s, the time when we variously sought a “newer world” in the expression of poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and “to be young was very heaven” in the words of poet William Wordsworth. Thompson himself put it at 1968 and the Democratic National Convention in bloody Chicago and I, for one, and I am not alone on this, called May Day, 1971, the day we tried, and failed, to shut down the government if it would not shut down the Vietnam War the ebb tide. Others have picked the horrific Rolling Stones concert at Altamont as the low tide and others have expressed other lesser events at the touchstone of the night of the long knives, the long night of fighting, these days seemingly daily rear-guard actions in the cultural wars burning a hole in this country, in America. All of this to say that the film under review, the now classic Harold and Maude, upon re-watching (after having seen it several times when it was a cheap no dough for big dinners date night ritual to go watch and re-watch the film when it first came out in 1971) seems very much a product of those times, a moment in those times and therefore dated. Dated not in a negative sense necessarily although some of the dialogue seems that way but very much rooted in the dying embers of the 1960s, the ebb tide previously mentioned.

       

I noted recently in a rare film review of the anti-fascist classic from 1945 starring Dick Powell Cornered, previously rare apparently since under the new Greg Green regime since here I am again, reviewing a classic of another sort, that generally I had been concerned with other types of commentary, mostly political and social, cultural if you will. Greg “drafted” me for this assignment with the understanding that since I had already seen the film when it came out and he wanted somebody to do a “then and now” piece as he called it, and as it is called in the business, in the film review business at least at his previous job as editor at American Film Gazette I was the logical choice. Neglecting the real logical choice Sam who actually reviewed the film in 1971 but who these days is in a knock down, drag out fight with young up and coming reviewer Sarah Lemoyne over a series of issues that need not detain us here. So I am second logical choice not only because I had seen (and re-seen) the film but because I have some comments about the times centered on that ebb tide business mentioned above.     

The premise of Harold and Maude is fairly simple, a benighted young rich kid, Harold, played by Bud Cort who I don’t recall having done anything much of anything on screen after this performance which may tell us something as well about the film or the times since it was not well-regarded except in the rarified air of Cambridge and such alternative life-style havens and as well the extremely rarified air around Sam Lowell in those day for he prophetically was one of the few who reviewed the film positively. Harold had, rich or poor then, two things many of the young could relate to a deep-seeded if comically portrayed hatred for his well-heeled but indifferent mother who controlled lots of his life’s decisions and too much time on his hands waiting to break out in the world. That former may seem strange today but during the 1960s a common slogan was “don’t trust anybody over 30” which meant every freaking parent of the baby-boomer generation was in our cross-hairs. The latter as well since we were caught in a world we didn’t create, a war we could not comprehend while being caught up in its throes and no constructive way to make ourselves heard without going to the barricades.    

Harold, an odd-ball and a loner, although nobody would have cared much one way or the other about his idiosyncrasies then, beside staging about twenty-seven fake suicide attempts for his mother’s “benefit” attended funerals, became on the surface at least comforted by that attendance. As part of that ritual he eventually meets the Maude of the title, played by energetic Ruth Gordon, a woman almost eighty and still going strong, still full of spunk. She attends the funerals for a very different reason, a reason having to do with coming to terms with her own mortality, not an unimportant concern given her age. Harold, after umpteen attempts by his mother to get him married to an assortment of young women, gravitates toward, well toward a grandmother figure. Maybe we all hated our parents then but we gave grandparents a pass. I know my own grandmother saved my young ass from many a home life wrangle with my own mother.

Once you get past the extreme age difference between the pair they are kind of an interesting couple. Maude has, as I said, her own agenda, but while they interact she is a positive influence on Harold breaking out of his self-imposed shell. His affect, his clothing, his interest shift as he becomes more in thrall of Maude. The dicey part, or rather the two dicey parts which may have accounted for the negative reviews back in the day, was that relationship leading to a romance, leading to sexual intercourse between the two. These days you can love who you want, or at least that is the thought of many people on the question of gender identification but the area of intergenerational sex still has some distance to go. Who the hell would go to bed with their grandmother after all. More pressing was that Maude agenda item. She held firm to the notion that at a certain age, eighty, she would have had enough of life. And she acted on it, took her own life when the deal went down leaving Harold bereft. But not paralyzed for knowing Maude Harold was able to break out of death door’s grasp. Like I said dated, but not necessarily in a negative way given our social identity issues today.