by Brent Calderwood
It might be time to stop calling Harold and Maude a cult film. Yes, it’s true that when it came out fifty years ago (December 20, 1971), many critics and audiences greeted it with a mix of bewilderment, indifference, and even hostility—Variety, for example, claimed it had “all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage.” And yes, it's also true that Harold and Maude has been a staple of midnight art-house screenings almost since its release and has topped “best cult films” lists for as long as “cult film” has been a recognizable term.
But 50 years on, Harold and Maude is so widely beloved by critics and new generations of film lovers that what was faintly hailed as an exquisite but slightly rarefied document of post-’60s counterculture is now firmly a part of our culture...
Witness, for example, the excellent 2018 documentary Hal (about the film’s director, Hal Ashby), or the entire oeuvre of Wes Anderson, or the love that Harold and Maude’s screenwriter, Colin Higgins, continues to receive for the films he went on to direct, especially 9 to 5. While it's still a valuable record of its time, from the Vietnam War to Cat Stevens, Harold and Maude is rendered timeless by the perfect casting of its stars, Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon.
In 2021 going on 2022, a film about a love relationship between a 20-year-old (Harold) and a 79-year-old (Maude) directed by a self-proclaimed pot-smoking hippie and scripted by a self-identified gay man is no longer inherently edgy, niche, or “cult.” And yet Maude’s open-hearted and insanely quotable manifestoes on love, self-expression, nonconformity, and empathy are as relevant and necessary as ever. Here are some of the best:
On Hookahs and Morality:
-Like a puff, Harold?
-Well, I really don’t smoke.
-It’s all right. It’s organic.
-I sure am picking up on vices.
-Vice? Virtue? It’s best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, well, then you are bound to live it fully.
On Birds and Prisons:
“You know, at one time, I used to break into pet shops to liberate the canaries. But I decided that was an idea way before its time. Zoos are full, prisons are overflowing. Oh my, how the world still dearly loves a cage.”
On Life and Taking Chances:
"A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E… Live! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room."
Do you have a favourite Harold & Maude quote?