Harold and Maude: Paramount Presents Edition - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Harold and Maude: Paramount Presents Edition



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: :
Final Score:


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Movie
Wow, is it really 50 years since Harold and Maude came out? I remember it being considered slightly “racy” for my hyper conservative parents 30 years ago when I was a child, and never even got into the film until I was about 30 years old (back when the Criterion Edition Blu-ray came out in 2012) and fell in love instantly. It was a quirky 70s comedy with a hint of Cameron Crowe style drama thrown in and it was so light and refreshing that I watched it 4 times that year. Sadly the Criterion edition went out of print several years ago, and it’s been insanely expensive to get a hold of (especially since my Criterion Edition disc got cracked dropping onto my tile around 2015). Luckily Paramount has going back, given the film a brand new 4K master for the Paramount Presents dust off, and even thrown in some brand new extras (though I believe one or two from the Criterion ARE missing, so you might want to hold onto that disc for that reason alone) for the 29th film in the Paramount Presents line of 4K remastered films.

Harold (Bud Cort) is a morbid and disturbingly obsessed with death teenager who does more than enough to drive his rich (if not distant) mother straight up batty. She’s suffered for years with his staged suicide pranks until she can stand it no longer, and vows to get him a girl, or get him into the military to straighten him out. A fan of going to funerals just to crash them and watch the casket get put into the ground, Harold runs into another person like him who’s rather obsessed with funerals in the form of Maude (Ruth Gordon or Rosemary’s Baby). HOWEVER, Maude is almost the exact opposite of Harold. She’s 79 years old that year, and instead of being obsessed with death, she’s obsessed with life to the point of being…..well…..eccentric.

Harold is fascinated by the gregarious septuagenarian and soon is swept into her chaotic life of stealing cars, planting trees out in the wilderness, going on dates to the cemetery, and generally living life to the fullest. The friendship between the unlikely pair forms and soon the two become inseparable, as Harold finds out that there is more to life than death, and more to death than simply exiting this world in a morbid fashion.

Harold and Maude is almost a dichotomy of a film. On one hand we have a quirky comedy about a boy and an elderly woman who meet and fall in love. However, their attraction is mental, not physical, which deftly side steps the creep factor and makes their relationship all the more fascinating. It seems platonic on one hand because it’s not two teenagers diving into bed, but you see genuine affection and caring grow between the two of them.

On the flip side of the coin it’s a very sad tragedy about death and life. Harold only seems alive when he’s creating pranks utilizing death to scare his mum, or when he’s with Maude around a cemetery. It’s sad to watch someone so depressed with life that the only escape that he can see is death and the love of death. While Maude most certainly turns him around, the film doesn’t end on a Hollywood happy note either. Death strikes for real again and while Harold’s life is forever changed, it will ever be shrouded in tragedy as well.




Rating:

Rated PG by the MPAA




Video:

According to Paramount they went back to the original negative and rescanned in 4K with some color correction and restoration to the original print. The results appear to be GREAT too. I can’t really remember the Criterion edition, but I know it looks pretty good back in the day, and if my memory serves me correctly this one outclasses it just a bit. There’s a nice grainy look to the film with a very natural look to it. Not clusters or clumping, no frozen grain, just a nice 1971 grainy film stock with a fantastic amount of detail. Colors lean towards warm pastels (as is the case with 70s films) and some slightly ruddy facial tones. Details are jaw dropping, ranging from Maude’s wrinkling face, to the humble scarf that she wears across her neck. Blacks are deep and rich, without any creamy black levels or obvious banding. All in all, an excellent transfer.









Audio:

Once more, Paramount has done some remixing and remastering. The Criterion Edition uses a 2.0 and Mono LPCM brace of tracks, but Paramount’s announcement states that the “sound track was completely remixed recently using newly discovered to tracks to add clarity and depth”. Thus we get a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track that sounds really really good. Honestly, if I didn’t know any better I would have thought it was recorded much later on in years than 1971. There’s no hisses, crackles or pops, and even though there’s some mild thinness to the vocals, it’s a very vibrant track. Surrounds get used quite nicely with ambient city noise, and the score is just so soft and smooth. It’s a well balanced track, but the purist in me really wishes we had gotten a Mono original mix as well. Still, very nice track.











Extras:

• NEWLY REMIXED SOUNDTRACK
• NEW Audio Commentary with Larry Karaszewski and Cameron Crowe
• NEW Yusuf/Cat Stevens on Harold and Maude
• Theatrical Trailer #1
• Theatrical Trailer #2
• Collectible packaging featuring a foldout image of the film's theatrical poster and an interior spread with key movie moments

Final Score: ​

Harold and Maude is a genuinely weird, but exciting film. It straddles a line between slapstick comedy and tragic drama quite well, even some 50 years later. It’s sort of a mellowed and more eccentric Mrs. Robinson, but on an intellectual level rather than physical. I have a hard time remembering the Criterion Edition’s picture quality all that much, but it looks like this 4K remaster does a great job preserving the original intent of the film. Definitely a good watch for fans of classic flicks.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, Ellen Geer
Directed by: Hal Ashby
Written by: Colin Higgins
Aspect Ratio: 1.85.1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French DD Mono
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, German
Studio: Paramount
Rated: PG
Runtime: 91 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 7th, 2021

Recommendation: Good Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Never heard of this movie but will look for it.