Sunnybank74

Brisbane’s West End, mid-70s. Saturday morning and a group of we high school seniors were off on the town to watch a movie under the guidance of our English teacher, Ray Fuary.

Mr Fuary was a ratbag, simple as that. In the largely conservative world of Bjelke-Peterson’s Queensland, he surely voted Labor, smoked dope, and hurled bricks at sacred cows. He was a breath of fresh air, and just a bit scary.

The movie was Harold and Maude, one that had never made the mainstream cinemas in Brisbane, but had somehow attracted Mr Fuary’s ratbag attention to the extent that he thought it worth exposing a class of callow teenagers to. To entertain us, to shock us a little bit, to make us think.

I was a few minutes late and as I sat down beside a schoolmate, I asked him what I had missed. “Not much,” he replied. “The star committed suicide in the first few seconds.”

And so began my love of a bizarre film, where the twenty year old Harold (Bud Cort, fresh from M*A*S*H) does his best to be dead, whilst still maintaining a grip on life. His seventy-nine-and-three-quarters-year-old girlfriend Maude (Ruth Gordon) is pretty much the reverse, and her harum-scarum schemes to enjoy life while she’s got it are in stark contrast to Harold’s inspired attempts to harass his mother by faking his own death.

A black comedy, panned by the New York Times at release, and famously described by Variety as having “all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage”, this movie attracted a cult following, who watched it time and time again, loving it more each time. Odd viewers. Like me.

I love Harold and Maude. Offbeat, upbeat, downplayed and replayed. A hundred great lines.

Maude: Harold, everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You just can’t let the world judge you too much.

Perhaps what attracted Mr Fuary to this film was the way that establishment figures were treated:

Uncle Victor: [attempting to interest Harold in military service] The two best wars this country ever fought were against the Jerries. I say get the Krauts on the other side of the fence where they belong. Let’s get back to the kind of enemy worth killing, and the kind of war this whole country can support.

Priest: I would be remiss in my duty if I did not tell you that the idea of intercourse – the act of your firm, young body… comingling with… withered flesh… sagging breasts… and flabby b-b-buttocks… makes me want… to vomit.

This was an antiwar, antipomp, antiauthority film. And, despite the focus, with scenes set during funeral services, picnics in cemeteries, and the cutest little E-Type hearse you ever laid eyes on, antideath.

Or rather, pro-life. Life to be lived and experienced in full. Every day something different, even after eight decades.

Age is not something that matters a great deal. Maude looks back on her life with fondness, even the parts that can’t have been very pleasant, but she doesn’t dwell on it. Or in it. She lives very much in the present.

As with many of the productions I love, this is something worth returning to again and again, just to capture a few more details. The converted railway carriage that is Maude’s home has some wonderful details that the camera just pans over, leaving you wondering, “just what was that… thing??”

I couldn’t leave without mentioning a superb supporting cast, led by English actress Vivian Pickles as Harold’s long-suffering but determinedly upbeat mother. The scene where she fills out a computer-dating questionnaire on behalf of her son is a gem:

Harold’s Mother: I have here, Harold, the forms sent out by the National Computer Dating Service. It seems to me that as you do not get along with the daughters of my friends this is the best way for you to find a prospective wife. The Computer Dating Service offers you at least three dates on the initial investment. They screen out the fat and ugly so it is obviously a firm of high standards…

Another element that makes this film a hit in my ears is the soundtrack music by Cat Stevens. Don’t be Shy, If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, and perhaps best of all, Trouble, masterfully overscoring the twist on a twist that makes the film’s ending one to savour.

Ray Fuary had a lot of great films to show us. Roman Polanski’s Macbeth was another I recall fondly, a world away from pure classical Shakespeare. When I went on to university, I became a film student, and it used to drive my girlfriend nuts that I’d point out arcane production or scriptwriting details when she was trying to enjoy a movie experience.

How I ended up as a night cabbie is another matter, but every day is a chance for a new experience.

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are!

Resources

• …as performers, they both are so aggressive, so creepy and off-putting, that Harold and Maude are obviously made for each other, a point the movie itself refuses to recognize with a twist ending that betrays, I think, its life-affirming pretensions. These reach an embarrassed low when Miss Gordon sits down at the piano, in the railroad car where she makes her home, and sings a rousing chorus of a song that starts: “Gimme an ‘l’/Gimme an ‘i’/a ‘v’ and an ‘e’/l-i-v-e/Live!” It’s even worse than the scene in which Harold sets fire to himself by the swimming pool. – Vincent Canby, NY Times
• Harold and Maude homepage
• Maude: A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. *Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.