Film
Harold and Maude
- Director
- Hal Ashby
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 87 mins
Yet another of those films that wouldn’t get made in these over-sensitive, offence-averse, bubble-wrapped times, Hal Ashby‘s pitch-black 1972 comedy is a real one of a kind.
Rejected by his mother, morbid rich kid Harold (Bud Cort) has become obsessed with death and spends his days driving a hearse and staging elaborate suicide scenes. His life changes when he meets and falls for septuagenarian Holocaust survivor Maude (Ruth Gordon) at – where else? – a funeral. Like so many cult classics, Harold and Maude was a critically panned box office failure on release, but has undergone a rappraisal in recent years. The American Film Institute now ranks it as the 45th funniest comedy in American Cinema. That makes it officially funnier than Fargo, Caddyshack and Beverly Hills Cop. It makes a welcome return to the screen in the apt surroundings of Arnos Vale Cemetery’s Anglican Chapel.
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