Harold and Maude

Earlsays

Earlsays

Well-Known Member
So who else here likes this flick? I just finished watching it for the 20th or so time...every time I seem to notice some new quirky thing about it...harold lights a match using a lighter to ultimately light two candles with a match...:D

So, in the end sequence...where it's flashing between him at the hospital and him driving the jag around and ultimately off the cliff...what do you think really happened? Do you think he jumped out of the car at the last second? Do you think he actually killed himself and it was his ghost playing the banjo? Do you think it was all just something going through his mind while at the hospital?

So many other points of discussion in the film...how did he hang himself and actually not die? Why was his mother so oblivious to all of it?

Such a great film.

discuss....
 
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i saw the film one time only, and that was in its original theatrical release in the early 70s, probably '71. unforgettable film, would love to see it again, you just gave me an idea for my netflix queue...
 
I have the movie, watch it every now and then for a touch of sanity. I first saw the movie in a theater over in Sommerville, Massachusetts, where it was the only movie on the venue aside from the King of Hearts. Now, that is a movie worth watching. If you rent it, get the French version, not the dubbed English, it takes away from the whole movie. Both movies played there for years on the weekends, always had a fairly packed house to boot. The other side of town had the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where people got on stage and played the parts. Used to leave during the "rain" scene, especially if you did not have a rain coat!
 
It was a sad sick movie about sad sick people. I loved it.

Unfortunately, most people did not get the point or recognise it for how prescient it was. The movie spoke to the desolution and aridity of both the culture of the rich and the cultural avant-guard.

In having a point to your life, or a blief in something beyond yourself, neither group had anything worth saying or sending forward in time.


By the way, does anyone know what movie had the quote "sombody threw away a perfectly good white boy". And I do mean besides and before "Men at Work".
 
I know I'm supposed to like it since I have a sick sense of humor, but I do not.

I find most, if not all, of the characters to be two dimensional. Plus, I do not like the Cat Stevens' tunes. Not one bit.

1971 had so many more memorable, less cliched, counter-cultural flicks. For example:

Clockwork Orange
Dirty Harry
Get Carter
Klute
Shaft
Straw Dogs
Sweet Sweetback's Baadassssss Song
Two-Lane Blacktop
Vanishing Point

Ken
 
cfranz said:
By the way, does anyone know what movie had the quote "sombody threw away a perfectly good white boy". And I do mean besides and before "Men at Work".
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Oh that's too easy... Blazing Saddles. They've been playing the hell out that movie on AMC and such lately.

The other great quote is from Slim Pickens... "Somebody's got to go back and get a shitload of dimes!"

Great film. I chuckle at it every time...

Regards,
Gordon.
 
Love Harold & Maude. Seen it numerous times. Lot of nuances going on but I suppose its basically about a young guy obsessed with death who falls for an old woman obsessed with life.

I think the final scene symbolizes rebirth. He drives the hearse over the cliff thus ridding himself of his old obsession/persona and walks away changed. Maude's influence was complete.

And ending later stolen in Quadrophenia.
 
Great movie and soundtrack (Cat Stevens--original songs--quite rare in LP). We just saw it at home recently since our elder son (filmmaker) hadn't yet seen it amongst the thousands of movies that he has seen. Ruth Gordon is a real pistol in this movie, and some of Harold's antics are just insane!
 
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cfranz said:
By the way, does anyone know what movie had the quote "sombody threw away a perfectly good white boy". And I do mean besides and before "Men at Work".
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It was Better Off Dead with John Cusack...Booger accidentally pushed him off the bridge he was thinking of jumping off of, and he fell into a passing garbage truck, two black dudes working on a telephone pole saw him pass under them, he waves, one looks to another says "It's a shame when they be throwin away a perfectly good white boy like that"

At least that's how I remember it...:D
 
Saw it in the late seventies. As already pointed out, the date scare-aways are priceless. I think some people just didn't get past the May-December relationship to really understand the movie. But then again, I have always been a fan of black comedy (Eating Raoul :thmbsp:) so maybe my opinion is slightly skewed.
 
spartanmanor said:
Great movie! I have always wanted a Volvo P1800 like Harolds hurst conversion car.
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Maybe I misunderstand your reply, but Harold's car was a Jaguar XK-E, at least when I saw the movie when it was first released, and over a hundred times since with my kids!!

I was interviewing a BMW designer once and asked him if he'd seen the movie. He looked at me rather quizzically and then told me how it was the inspiration for the BMW Z3 M-Coupé. But I already figured that out, which is why I was asking the question. It turned out to be the result of a design exercise on a slow day in Munich.
:banana:

HM_Hearse.jpg
BMW-Z3-Coupe-2-8---1998-2000-.jpg
 
Absolutely loved it! Never laughed so hard (mainly had no idea what it was about before seeing it. The whole taken by surprise factor, it was a book 1st i think). A parody --especially the anti war, took a few pokes at religion (other than the fact that Ruth's character was in her younger life a survivor of the Nazi death camps). She saw death as a new beginning and imparted that to Harold -- A very Life and hope affirming flick I thought. Just my .02 from an aging memory.
 
........another one of that period, "Soylent Green" Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson if i recall, quite a dark film
 
BMWCCA said:
Maybe I misunderstand your reply, but Harold's car was a Jaguar XK-E, at least when I saw the movie when it was first released, and over a hundred times since with my kids!!

I was interviewing a BMW designer once and asked him if he'd seen the movie. He looked at me rather quizzically and then told me how it was the inspiration for the BMW Z3 M-Coupé. But I already figured that out, which is why I was asking the question. It turned out to be the result of a design exercise on a slow day in Munich.
:banana:
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Brain fart...you are right I love that car as well. :D

volvo-1800-conv_1.jpg
 
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