The screen-grab above doesn’t do the shot justice. Too dark. But, still, you can (barely) see the shine on Harold’s shoes as he walks down the stairs (on film it’s all much clearer). The way Pablo Ferro arranges the title sequence below the shoes gives you a visual sense of the feet dangling above the words; which is perfect since that is exactly what the audience is walking into for this opening scene. Ferro’s no slouch, having done title sequences for the likes of Kubrick (on Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange)  and many others (ie: Beetle Juice, L.A. Confidential, Men in Black, Good Will Hunting, etc., etc., and still quite busy, with the pending Howl to add to the resume). I have often thought that you can tell within seconds when a film is going to be good or bad based on the very first impression, and Harold and Maude is one of those films that confirms said notion. It has an economy of style that engages you immediately and then zips by at a quick clip while somehow giving the  main characters exactly the right amount of time to breathe. Everyone else involved in the production put in work that is also in top form; and I can’t even begin to deduce how many Cat Stevens fans were made thanks to his soundtrack. 

Cufflinks, jewelry, big ring, expensive furniture, you see all these things before ever seeing Harold’s face (played by Bud Cort). You don’t have to be a rocket-scientist to know he’s wealthy. But he also puts on a Cat Stevens record, so he’s clearly  no square and is tapping into the youthful vibe of his time (this being 1971). He makes his preparations, lights the candles, and kicks the chair out away and we see those well-shined shoes again, this time dangling lower and below the director’s title sequence as they drift back-and-forth, to the left-and-right of Hal Ashby’s name, the feet now ominously floating in the air. Harold’s mother, Mrs. Chasen (played by Vivian Pickles) stiffly walks by and nonchalantly looks at her hanging son and seems not to care in the least. “I suppose you think that’s very funny, Harold,” she says – and then goes about her business with a phone call.

Here we are, not even five minutes in, and short of what Maude will bring to the table (Ruth Gordon’s contributions being, of course, crucial), all viewers can immediately grasp the macabre and comedic tone of disconnect that will inform the rest of the film. I’m not sure why I decided to watch Harold and Maude again recently as I’d already seen it a half-dozen times while in college. But, that having been about two decades ago, and perhaps with last-week’s auto-erotic asphyxiation theme still in mind, somehow this popped up as my choice for a film to put on after Sam Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A. this last New Year’s Eve (latter being perfect thanks to an opening robbery sequence that also takes place as drunken revelers sing Old Lang Syne while donning party hats and blowing on party favors). The surprise was this: I fully expected to only watch perhaps the first half-hour of Harold and Maude before skipping out to a party, but I found myself so fully engrossed and, despite having screened it multiple times before, was still uncovering so many pleasant surprises that the time just flew by and I saw the film through to the end and was late for the party.

Take the scene above, for example. It’s only 24 minutes into the film and shows Harold and Maude leaving their second funeral in Harold’s pre-Jaguar Hearse, and already Harold’s world of dark interiors is giving way to new horizons thanks to Maude’s zest for life. Even more telling: a rainbow (how did I not see that before?!)…

Then, almost immediately after the rainbow, comes the scene above where – upon Maude finding out that the hearse she is driving belongs to Harold, she insists that he drive and take her home – we see a division of landscape between the cemetery they are leaving and landscape beyond, being plowed and worked by farmers. This, of course, perfectly illustrates the schism between death and life that our characters are straddling. But whereas Harold is still entrenched on only one side of the divide Maude, as we are soon to see,  likes to drink in both sides of the landscape and takes life, gardening, and growth very seriously (as she does death, and unlike Harold, she won’t be faking it).

Maude’s an odd bird; she’s an artist, collector, and lives in an abandoned train filled with all kinds of things that are meant to awaken the senses. She also reveals that she is all too familiar with “How the world still dearly loves a cage.” Her relationship to cages becomes much clearer at the 69-minute-mark (above) where Harold can see, for the first time, the numbers on her arm. She quickly distracts him by saying: “Oh, look! (Points at flock of seagulls.) Dreyfus once wrote from Devil’s Island that he would see the most glorious birds. Many years later in Britain he realized they’d only been seagulls. (Pause.) For me they will always be glorious birds.”

Given how disappointed I was in re-visiting Heathers last week, here I’m happy to report that Harold and Maude still met all expectations. I’ll add a closing note that surprised me from Roger Ebert, who only gave the film one-and-a-half-stars on January 1, 1972: “And so what we get, finally, is a movie of attitudes. Harold is death, Maude life, and they manage to make the two seem so similar that life’s hardly worth the extra bother. The visual style makes everyone look fresh from the Wax Museum, and all the movie lacks is a lot of day-old gardenias and lilies and roses in the lobby, filling the place with a cloying sweet smell. Nothing more to report today. Harold doesn’t even make pallbearer.” I know Ebert seldom changes his rating, and admire his conviction to let his reviews stand as their own statement free of Lucas-like meddling. But here wonder if, just maybe, he wouldn’t change his mind.