I just saw this for the first time in maybe ten years. What a sweet film. I still love it.
Love the car.
I recently found out Cat Stevens has returned to making music (as Yusuf Islam). His 2006 album ‘An Other Cup’ was pretty good; I love ‘Maybe There’s a World’ from it.
I’ve wondered if the deleted/extended scenes to this are still available. In the trailer, for example, there’s a scene of the two kissing that’s obviously in the scene before Harold’s bubble blowing scene (it’s at about 2:40 into this trailer ), and in the novelization there’s a lot more of Glaucus (his hope is to sculpt the perfect statue out of ice for his eyes alone) and other anecdotes told by Maude that I’ve wondered if they appeared in the movie. (Of course in the novel she also lives in a row house rather than a train car, so obviously some things were changed.)
Trivia: it was made into a musical that flopped on Broadway (4 performances) but was revamped and plays in community and regional theater sometimes. Janet Gaynor was in the shortlived B’way version; in two of the various revivals Maude has been played by Ellen Geer [Will “Grandpa Walton” Geer’s daughter and Sunshine Dore from the movie- she inherited an outdoor theater from her father and her version was staged there= recent pic ) and Estelle Parsons (an Oscar winner [Bonnie & Clyde] but probably best known as ROSEANNE’s mom). The musical apparently still has some bugs, but Carol Burnett has expressed interest if the musical is ever “fixed”.
I love that movie too. My favorite scene is when he giver her the bracelet.
My favorite scene and favorite line are the one where Harold has just seen Maude’s tattoo and she says
I’ve no idea whether or not the comment about Dreyfus is true, but either way it’s just one of my favorite scenes from any movie.
Of course next to that I love the line
I always wondered about the visual when she says “All the world loves a cage.” The camera pans to the interior of her trailer – is that to imply that she’s living in a cage, too? Or to show the contrast between her home and the typical one?
I’ve only ever seen the movie on a television, I figured that scene was one for the big screen.
Absolutely adore Harold and Maude. That’s one of the things I’m looking forward to sharing w/my kids when they’re teenagers.
My all time favorite movie! I need to did it out. I haven’t watched it in a couple years. Now I’m humming the song at the end. I think it’s call If You Want to be Free.
The novelization is available full-text online for those interested. (A lot more on Maude’s husband particularly.)
As for the cage, I don’t think there’s really any meaning in the shot other than Harold taking her in. This is from the book:
So, it’s just an introduction to Maude. (Arouet [italics mine here and above] was the family name of Voltaire- it reminds me that Colin Higgins was a college student when he began writing the screenplay as it’s probably a sort of heavy handed attempt at subliminal homage [though it doesn’t detract from the book and wasn’t in the movie iirc)
PS= Another Francophilic homage: Maude’s surname is de Chardin.
Back in the summer of 1979 I was 12 years old and spending the summer with my aunt. She was a member of Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum and I got to spend a summer doing theater with Ellie Geer and her siblings. It was a marvelous experience, and I always smile when I see Ellie in various TV shows and movies. She was a very, very kind and creative person.
- Richard Moll (who played Bull on Night Court) was a member of that group as well. He went by the nickname “Charlie” and was friends with my aunt. We spent an afternoon at the beach with him.
Cool story. Will Geer seems something like a male version of Maude himself- jovial and kind and wacky in spite of all he went through. For those who don’t know the story of his theater, he was a botanist by training who owned a small farm in Topanga before becoming rich, and when his career was hijacked by McCarthy (he had been a member of the Communist Party at one time) he and other blacklisted actors took refuge there doing Shakespeare in the open air, and it became the Theatricum Botanicum.
I never understood his fake suicides. They looked really real. Was he pretending to kill himself or was he really killing himself and then resurrected?
The former. It was his hobby – that is, it was his way of freaking out his mother.
"Harold! She was your last date!"
This film was a huge cult classic in Berlin and played in a movie theater there every weekend for years. As far as I know, it might still be playing!
Trivia about the Berliners - the film was originally released in English with only German subtitles. They often did that with smaller films they didn’t think were worth spending money on dubbing into German.
Well after many years of being the cult film, they finally dubbed it into German - and the core audience was furious! Apparently the English was fairly easy for most Germans to understand and they hated the dubbed version. The uproar was so vocal that they pulled the dubbed version and put the original English version back into the theaters, where it again scored big with the late night crowds.
At the height of its German popularity, Colin Higgins (the author) came to Berlin and put together a stage version of it - I don’t think it was the musical, but I might be wrong. At any rate, the play was a flop and didn’t last very long.
One of my favorite exchanges is with his psychiatrist (who he always dresses exactly like):
But how did he do the one where he lit himself on fire? Or where he shot himself in the head?
I have to say that, although I find Cat Stevens’ music insipid, it works well in this film. Perhaps the film delivers the gravitas the music lacks (despite Cat’s efforts), and the resulting balance works for me.
Harold: You sure have a way with people.
Maude: Well, they’re my species!
Maude the Nietzschean: 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, then you’re bound to live life fully.
You’re not supposed to care.
I haven’t seen this movie in years. By coincidence it is #2 on our Netflix Queue and I just sent two movies off today. My wife and I are both looking forward to seeing again.
Hopefully this thread is still active when we watch it.
Jim