Harold and Maude

The soundtrack is by Cat Stevens, and includes two songs which he composed specifically for the movie and which were unavailable for several decades on vinyl or cassette (they were later released on the compact disc Footsteps in the Dark). Farrow and Sinatra divorced soon after the film was completed. She tells Harold at one point about Alfred Dreyfus seeing fantastic birds on Devil's Island and finding out later that they were only seagulls. She says that to her they would always be fantastic birds. He was closely involved in the production, and numerous times had to deal with Mia Farrow's precarious relationship with then husband Frank Sinatra. Her backstory is only hinted in the film. This film was Robert Evans' first big hit running Paramount Pictures. She sees beauty where others see none, believes in the innate goodness of people (but not the State), and practices what she calls her own individual revolution. Gordon won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film.

Maude, on the other hand, is a fictionalizer and a dreamer. The novel was adapted to film in 1968 by Roman Polanski and featured Mia Farrow as the wife, John Cassavetes as the husband, and Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as the neighbors. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Harold can only feel significant by dying. The woman begins to lose weight instead of gaining it, and comes to suspect that her neighbors are part of a Satanic cult, and that her husband is working with them. While Harold is part of a society where he can have no importance and no meaning, Maude has survived against totalitarianism. The couple want to have a baby; one night the woman has a vision that she is being raped by some demonic presence and later she finds out that she is pregnant. Hal Ashby, the director of the film, was part of the San Francisco youth culture, and his film posits the doomed youth of the alienated against the vital age of the Holocaust survivors. Rosemary's Baby is the title of a 1967 horror novel by Ira Levin, in which a young religious woman and her husband move into a New York City, New York apartment next door to enthusiastic, oversolicitous neighbors.

The two form an unlikely friendship, then romance. ISBN 3926048301 (hardcover). Maude is very much his opposite: a senior citizen, energetic, impulsive, and light-hearted. ISBN 0451210514 (paperback, 2003). At these he repeatedly sees Maude, a 79 year-old woman who befriends him. ISBN 0451194004 (mass market paperback, 1997). For amusement, Harold attends funerals of people he doesn't know. ISBN 1568654707 (hardcover, 1997).

This has evidently been going on for so long that his mother takes no notice, other than when Harold causes a particular mess with his fake blood. ISBN 1568490658 (library binding, 1991). Harold stages realistic mock-suicides. The film first introduces us to Harold, an alienated teenaged boy from a wealthy family who lives in a large mansion with his dominating mother. The screenplay on which the film was based was written by Colin Higgins, and published as a novel in 1984.

The film was a commercial failure when it was released and critics were divided. The film is number 45 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Funniest Movies and in 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The film features both dark and light humor, social satire (including anti-war), promotes the notion of living life to its fullest, and has long had a cult following. Harold and Maude is a 1971 movie, directed by Hal Ashby.

Cinematography by: John Alonzo. Borman). Motorcycle Officer: Tom Skerritt (as M. Edith Phern: Shari Summers.

Candy Gulf: Judy Engles. Wood. Psychiatrist: G. Priest: Eric Christmas.

Sunshine Doré: Ellen Geer. Uncle Victor: Charles Tyner. Glaucus: Cyril Cusack. Chasen: Vivian Pickles.

Mrs. Harold Chasen: Bud Cort. Marjorie Chardin (Maude): Ruth Gordon.