Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, Charles Tyner
Have I Seen It Before?: No.
Did I like it?: Yes…
But I do wonder if it is one of those instances where a film’s music single-handedly makes the rest of the film watchable. There are several absurdist—almost cartoonish—moments of mayhem on display, and they bring a smile to one’s face, even when they turn the morbidity up to eleven. I laughed much harder than I had any right to when Maude (Gordon) tells a Motorcycle Cop (Tom Skerritt, apparently using a different credit and trying to hide out), “Don’t get officious. You’re not yourself when you’re officious. That is the curse of a government job.”
Harold and Maude trucks (or more appropriately, stole cars) in the same era of late-adolescent ennui that permeated The Graduate (1967). So much so, that the two films have surprisingly similar taglines on their posters, but this film far more effectively rejects the suburban yuppiness that The Graduate is either resigned to or fails to ultimately surpass. Benjamin Braddock appears doomed at the end of the older film, whereas Harold (Cort) has experienced loss far more tragic but is more positively affected by what had happened during the film.
This is all to say that the film is perfectly charming. But would I have been anywhere near as swept away if—as Ashby had originally intended—Elton John’s music had filled the film’s soundtrack instead of Cat Stevens? That’s not even a knock against John’s discography, but I do watch this movie and am instantly in the mind of that one spring many years ago where I couldn’t stop listening to “Tea of the Tillerman.” It was prime “being Harold” time for me. Had the film tied its fate to songs like “Levon” or “Your Song” I don’t think the film—or those songs—would have been as well-remembered as they are.