Harold and Maude
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Harold and Maude is a cult classic movie directed by Hal Ashby in 1971. The film, featuring slapstick, dark humor, and existentialist drama, centers around the exploits of a morbid young man — Harold — who drifts away from the life that his detached mother prescribes him as he develops a relationship with septuagenarian Maude.
The film is number 45 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Funniest Movies of all time, and number 42 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film was a commercial failure when it was released and the critical reception was extremely mixed. It now has a large cult following.
The screenplay upon which the film was based was written by Colin Higgins, and published as a novel in 1971. The movie was shot in the San Francisco Bay Area. Harold and Maude was also a play on Broadway for some time.
The movie has given rise to two new words: "Harolding" (hanging around cemeteries) described by Douglas Coupland in "Harolding in West Vancouver" (1996); and "Maudism" or "Maudianism", the philosophy of living each day to the fullest. This may also have a link to the phonetically-similar philosophy of Mod-ism.
The entire soundtrack for the movie is by Cat Stevens.
