14 Love Stories: HAROLD AND MAUDE

Happy February!  We're halfway through the late winter doldrums, and that means its time for candy hearts and movies about young beautiful people trying to score.  Don't give me any of that anti-Valentine's Day crap.  I'm single and even a bit cynical, but I think that just makes it better.  The nice thing about Valentine's is that, being about romantic love, there's a whole genre of films appropriate for holiday viewing; the trick is finding the good ones!  I'll give you a few of my recommendations, 14 to be exact.  I don't know if these are really the "best" romance movies ever, and I few of them I'm sure are not, but I personally love each one.

"There's a million ways to be," the Cat Stevens song "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out", from HAROLD AND MAUDE, philosophizes.  Not every romance follows a certain formula, and yet even the least convention are just applying their unconventionality to a universal template, such as boy meets girl or boy meets woman old enough to be his grandmother, but they say it takes all kinds...

HAROLD AND MAUDE  (1971)
Directed Hal Ashby
Starring: Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles
Rated GP [early equivalent of PG] (contains PG-13-level mature thematic material including violent content and some suggestive content).
Availability: Various streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Prime, some retailers

Hal Ashby's HAROLD AND MAUDE may not be for all tastes, but it's a classic love story built on eccentricity and a good heart.
Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) is an upper-class, wealthy young man whose conservative socialite mother (Vivian Pickles) would like nothing more than to see him married to a beautiful young wife with ideals similar to her own.  Unfortunately, Harold is obsessed with death.  He routinely stages his own suicide, whether by hanging, wrist-cutting, gunshot, immolation or seppuku.  He drives around in an old hearse, and when his mother takes the liberty of buying him a top-notch sports car, he converts that into a hearse.  In his spare time, he likes to go to funerals.  Harold is comfortable with death, and he hates the life of the living that he experiences around his mother and her blue-blooded society.  While going to the funerals of strangers, Harold encounters Maude Chardin (Ruth Gordon), who is likewise going to the funerals of strangers, but for a reason opposite of Harold's.  Maude loves the experience of the life cycle, seeing the deceased sent off into the unknown and sharing in the memories of the living.  An absolute libertarian, Maude also has a habit of driving away in any car she pleases, racking up quite a count of grand theft auto charges.  Although Harold is reluctant at first, he befriends Maude, who drives off in his hearse one day.  She shares her carpe diem lifestyle with Harold, who finds he actually enjoys life, with Maude.
Maude is peculiar variation on the "manic pixie dream girl" stereotype, even before such a stereotype existed.  Her character concept is directly related to Katherine Hepburn's Susan Vance in BRINGING UP BABY (1938) and just about every character Zooey Deschanel has every played.  However, Maude is 79 years old, coming up on 80.  "I would be remiss in my duty, if I did not tell you, that the idea of... intercourse - your firm, young... body... comingling with... withered flesh... sagging breasts... flabby b-b-buttocks... makes me want... to vomit."  At least, that's how Harold's priest puts it.
HAROLD AND MAUDE is a prime example of the shift in culture at the time of its release, at which time it was a critical and financial flop, before earning a more positive reputation in later years.  Harold is a representation of the younger generation of baby boomers who are disillusioned by the decaying values of their elders in the midst of a meaningless Vietnam War.  They are a generation without purpose, following after the exceptional "Greatest Generation" of WWII, which Maude represents in a greater purity than the wealthy and decadent institutions in Harold's mother's society.  Maude is the survivor, someone who has done great things and survived a war of incomparable purpose, and in turn is someone living a rich life of optimism.  It is about the existential alienation of the youthful generation from their predecessors, but done with a sense of optimism as extolled by the film's events.
There is a bit of a barrier for some viewers though, because even beyond the main plot of a romantic relationship between a young college-aged man and a 79-year old woman, it's a very eccentric film.  There's a prominent streak of black humor throughout, as Harold "commits suicide" on multiple occasions, always with typical movie gore effects, but never with any explanation of their falsity.  If he didn't show up in the next scene, we would safely assume his death.  That might bug some people, assuming they get past their horror at the graphic gruesomeness of Harold's hobby, but don't worry about it.