What the Nominees Were: A Clockwork Orange, Fiddler on the Roof, The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, Nicholas and Alexandra
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: I can understand how they overlooked Harold and Maude, but how could they ignore the greatness of McCabe and Mrs. Miller??
How It’s Aged: It’s one of the best movies ever made. A crackerjack action-thriller but also a profound meditation on good and evil. I desperately wish I could let this movie keep its Oscar. But…
How Hard Was the Decision: An almost impossible choice between The French Connection, Fiddler on the Roof, The Last Picture Show, and Harold and Maude, all of which I dearly love. But I had to go with my personal favorite of the year, and maybe all-time, Harold and Maude. Ultimately, when deciding between movies, my test is always, “did it make me laugh and cry” and this movie always makes me laugh out loud and cry like a baby.
Director: Hal Ashby
Writer: Colin Higgins
Stars: But Cort and Ruth Gordon
Any Nominations or Wins: Cort and Gordon were both nominated for Golden Globes in the comedy categories, but neither won, and it got no attention from the Oscars at all.
Why It Didn’t Win: Initial reviews were poor (Rex Reed called it “a sick, demented little movie”) and box office was poor before it developed a cult, so it didn’t have a chance.
Why It Should Have Won:
Why It Should Have Won:
- The original cut was three hours and producer Charles B. Mulvehill says in the Criterion commentary that you wanted to strangle the characters for being so uplifting for so long. The final cut is 91 minutes without cutting any scenes out, just cutting everyone down (especially good advice from Maude) and it’s a marvel of speed. Every storyline has three quick scenes, all intercut together: Three funerals with Maude, three therapy scenes, three visits with Uncle Victor, three computer dates set up by his mother, intercut brilliantly, each scene starting late and ending early on a question that is answered by a smash-cut. This is one of the all-time best screenplays.
- The Graduate’s use of Simon and Garfunkel songs was great, and Midnight Cowboy’s over-reliance on one Harry Nilsson song was less so, but this movie surpasses them both in its inspiring use of Cat Stevens’ catalogue. Stevens points out in a special feature that he was worried because “this is a comedy and my music is quite serious” but that’s what makes it work. There’s a lot of profundity in the music that doesn’t have to be in the script.
- For 1970 I considered Ashby’s brilliant first film The Landlord and I’ll be considering more 1970s films of his as we go along (the 80s are not to be spoken of). He looked like a hippie (that’s him standing between Harold and Maude) but he was in his 40s and a lapsed Mormon, so he had a unique perspective on the counterculture. This is the best “hippie” movie of the era, but Maude (as the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Old-Woman) is an odd and unique vehicle for those values.
- Suicide comedy is inherently distasteful, but this movie takes the topic very seriously while still milking it for fun. Somehow, it works. It’s revealed in the commentary that Ashby’s father committed suicide when Ashby was 12 and he discovered the body, so he was bringing a lot of pain to the movie, and yet each scene where Harold’s mother finds him seemingly dead is freshly hilarious. I love that it’s never made clear how Harold is surviving all of these suicide attempts (we can imagine a way for each one, but the movie gives no clues) until his third date when the date decides to join him in his mock-attempt, but quickly checks to make sure it’s a collapsible knife.
- When Harold catches a glimpse of Maude’s holocaust tattoo, he realizes that, no matter how much we might think we know and love someone, it’s possible to be totally unaware of the depth of their hidden pain. That realization is at the heart of literature, and living in general.
- The acting on Ruth Gordon’s face when she tells Harold she’s taken the pills, still trying to be upbeat, is a master class in complexity. She had won an Oscar a few years before for Rosemary’s Baby (and been nominated before for her screenwriting) but c’mon, if this isn’t an Oscar performance what is? (It’s only on second watch that we realize to our shock that she’s been saying all movie long that she’s going to commit suicide at the end of the week, but tossing off the lines in a way that we don’t take seriously, nor does Harold.)
- When Hollywood makes movies about older-women relationships, it always casts a woman who is barely older than the man, if not younger (Anne Bancroft in The Graduate was only six years older than Dustin Hoffman, and the leg on the poster was that of an even younger woman). This movie, to put it mildly, does not do that, to its enormous credit. Now this is an age gap.
