Harold (Bud Cort) has a little bit of an obsession with death in very different kind of romantic comedy
HAROLD AND MAUDE (Hal Ashby, 1971)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Monday, July 22, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
Bud Cort (Harold) and Ruth Gordon (Maude) are magnificent in this glorious black comedy from director Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Shampoo, Being There) and writer Colin Higgins (Foul Play, 9 to 5). Harold is an eighteen-year-old rich kid obsessed with death, regularly flirting with suicide. Maude is a fun-loving, free-spirited senior citizen approaching her eightieth birthday. Ashby throws in just the right amount of post-1960s social commentary, including a very funny antiwar scene, without becoming overbearing, as this could have been a maudlin piece of sentimental claptrap, but instead it’s far from it. Even the Cat Stevens soundtrack (“If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” “Tea for the Tillerman,” “Where Do the Children Play?”) works. Harold and Maude is a tender, uproarious, bittersweet tale that is one of the best of its kind, completely unforgettable, enlightening, and, ultimately, life-affirming in its own odd way. Harold and Maude is screening in a DCP projection July 22 at 8:00 as part of the IFC Center series “Queer/Art/Film” and will be followed by a discussion with Chilean multidisciplinary artist, musician, and director Sebastián Silva (Crystal Fairy, Iwannawin & Friends). The monthly series, which consists of films selected by gay New York City artists, concludes August 19 with Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette, picked by Brooklyn-born visual artist Chitra Ganesh.