Film Critique: Harold and Maude – Genre Theory

Author: Hope-Elena Sardella, ENG225, 02/26/2018

In this week’s first discussion, our class has been asked to choose a film from AFI’s top 10 list, to identify and examine the genre (or sub-genres) of a chosen film. I have selected my favorite film as a teenager; “Harold and Maude.” At first glance on AFI’s Romantic Comedy top ten lists, we can find Harold and Maude listed at number nine of the genre. Romantic Comedy is described by GoodyKoontz and Jacob (2014) as “somewhat limited by the scope of what it attempts to accomplish- bringing two people together.” This fact alone tells us that a romantic comedy has to be inventive if it wants to stand out in a sea of other romantic comedy films. The majority of romantic comedies have a similar plot, which entails a love story of two people overcoming some obstacle in the search for a happily ever after (Goodykoontz & Jacob, 2014). Romantic Comedy genre is presented in Harold and Maude by telling a story of a boy named Harold who falls madly in love with a 79-year-old Jewish woman named Maude, a local artist and concentration camp victim. In fact, Harold meets Maude at a funeral that he crashes which turns out Maude likes crashing funerals too:

Maude seems to be the light in Harold’s life that he’s never had, that which he is drawn to her positivity. Harold’s mother is the main obstacle/ protagonist whom he fight’s with relentlessly, to preserve his relationship with Maude. What makes this film so unique in its genre; Is that the movie defies all predispositions of the typical Romantic Comedy, by being completely absent of a “happy ending,” but also displaying insurmountable amounts of Black Humor.
  Harold and Maude is technically classified under the romantic comedy section but has a sub-genre called Black Comedy. The sub-genre of a film is a refined genre classification of the events within a movie (Goodykoontz & Jacob, 2014). Due to my intimate knowledge of this film, I can tell you that Harold and Maude is quite the unlikely love story.  Harold and Maude illustrates the life of a young man, whom might I add come from an extremely wealthy family that he harbors disdain towards. Despite his wealth, he is very depressed and feels the need to stage his suicide frequently to scare his mother (yet one of the many examples of black humor). In one of my all-time favorite scenes of Harold and Maude, we see an amazing example of Black Humor; Harold’s mother purchases him an E-type Jaguar. Harold hates the car, and to spite his mother, he chops off the top and replaces the top of the vehicle with the top of a Herse.

In these scenes, the audience is introduced to the sub-genre of Black Comedy which is consistent throughout the film. Black Comedy is a style of comedy that makes fun of certain subject’s that society says we should take seriously. Professor and author Wes Gehring, validate’s the presence of Black Comedy in the film Harold and Maude’s by stating “In terms of black humor’s final pivotal theme (man as beast) as it applies to Harold and Maude, we need to go no further than the concentration camp number tattooed on Maude’s arm”. The genre of Romance Comedy and sub-genre of Black Comedy is prevalent throughout the entirety of the film Harold and Maude, which makes this romantic comedy unique.

References

Gehring, W. D. (2016). Chapter 4 – Harold and Maude (12/21/71). In Genre-busting dark comedies of the 1970s: twelve American films (pp. 68-85). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. doi:https://books.google.com/books?id=zDPECwAAQBAJ&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=sub genres of the film harold and maude&source=bl&ots=1X6f4ntEL2&sig=wiQzkpUYVfBYUb_r3r_gkLeJgfM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwzJ2dkLjZAhUq_IMKHTHmDSQQ6AEIiQEwCw#v=onepage&q=sub%20genres%20of%20the%20film%20harold%20and%20maude&f=false

Goodykoontz, B. & Jacobs, C. P.(2014).Film: From watching to seeing(2nd ed.) [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

YouTube. (2011). Movieclips [Video channel]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/WuHkE1eU2AY (Links to an external site.)

YouTube. (2017). Movieclips [Video channel]. Retrieved from