Holocaust Tattoo and the Zoom Shot in Harold and Maude | CinemaSlice
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- The strange and crucial moment where a tattoo appears in Harold and Maude, explained and explored for your pleasure.
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CinemaSlice is a series of short video essays about the moments in films that make them special for one reason or another. It is a collaborative project led by Mr. W, a Film Studies teacher who sees the positive in places you might have missed.
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This movie played for over a year at a small theater in Minneapolis. Ruth Gordon actually made an appearance at the one year anniversary and gave a short talk. I was fortunate enough to be there and it was pretty amazing.
I was there too
She came again at the 2 year anniversary, with Bud Cort. By that time the neighborhood was starting to protest the long run, they wanted to watch something else.
Ohhhhh, how I envy you!! That really is such a precious memory. I wish I could’ve been so fortunate as to be in the presence of Ruth Gordon. I’m afraid she died before I was in grade school.
I was there, too, meant times😊
Many times I meant to type
“To me, they will always be glorious birds.” You left out the best line in the movie.
One of the other interesting things about that scene is what Maude says about Dreyfus: “Dreyfus once wrote from Devil's Island that he would see the most glorious birds". Her joy reminds her of a story that Dreyfuss had once written about [some background here -- Dreyfuss was the famous French Jewish army officer who was unfairly accused of selling military secrets in the late 1800's by fascist nationalist types. He was arrested and put in prison on Devil's Island in French Guyana, in South America. Emile Zola published a famous and fierce denunciation of the military authorities in 1898, called "J'Accuse."] Dreyfuss was imprisoned in solitary confinement on Devil's Island, with nothing to do but stare out of his cell, where for years he had been thrilled to watch "the most *beautiful* birds." Maude quotes Dreyfuss: "Later on in Brittany, I realized that they had only been seagulls." There's a pause, while the Cat Stevens music swells a bit, and then Maude explains to Harold: "For me, they will *always* be glorious birds." I read the following on a website many years ago: "I remember about the tenth viewing I suddenly gasped and got chills during the seagull scene when I realized WHY she starts to talk about Dreyfuss and Devil's Island and the seagulls *right at at that moment*. She is addressing Harold's unspoken question about her experiences in the concentration camp. She is really talking about HERSELF and the attitude that she brought to the concentration camp. "Later on, HE realized that they had only been seagulls. But TO ME they will always be glorious birds." Seagulls are a symbol of freedom and she is telling Harold that she was able to keep her mind free and joyous even in the worst circumstances."
Thank you so much for this comment. That’s superb background.
The Dreyfus reference was lost to me until I finally looked up just who she was quoting. The tattoo already added so much, but Dreyfus added yet another layer. Just phenomenal filmmaking.
The greatest films are the ones you can watch 100 times and still discover new layers. This film is definitely one of those.
Appreciate the silver lining in every dark cloud.
A saw this movie as a teenager in the seventies and it cast a spell over me. In a world obsessed with youth, it showed me that love can happen at any age, between any ages. I've never forgotten that, and my life has been richer for it.
Thank you so much for this video. This is my favorite movie of all time. I feel like Harold trying to live like Maude.
Thanks so much! We really love it too. It’s unique in its voice. It really is.
Mine too!
@@cinemaslice7420 mine since I was 14, now I am 62! Iam from Berlin in Germany!
That's wonderful, Geewizz1360. Now go out and love some more!
The late 60's and early 70's were the best times for risky and unconventional films like Harold and Maude. I first saw it on a cable movie channel in the early 80's and it became an instant favourite. No amount of viewings have diminished its appeal. Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort are outstanding. It's such a wonderfully weird story that could have been grotesque and tasteless if made by a lesser director. Hal Ashby keeps a good balance between the two extremes of Harold's morbid obsession with death and Maude's exuberant love to life. That single shot of the tattoo on her forearm is all we need to know about her character. No need for any expository dialogue about what she had experienced. Hal Ashby was wise enough not to go any deeper into the subject. The expression on Harold's face mirrors our own reaction and we understand her better. Not a word of dialogue was required. It is beautiful and heartbreaking moment.
I too am a lifelong fan of Harold and Maude, but you are not correct to think that shot is "all we need to know." If we do, then the shot should have been longer. For the record, the tattoo in the movie does not take the care to reproduce what an actual tattoo (from presumably Auschwitz) would look like. It's clear what the gesture in the film intends to say, but there is more exposition of Maude's biography in the film that already makes it amply clear. If you take a look at the original screenplay, it is indeed canny how someone (the editor, Ashby, maybe even Higgins) modified the script to keep it tighter, including a decision to remove the actual sex scene between Maude and Harold.
In point of fact, neither Maude's background nor Harold's figure much in the story, because it is their present that matters. Maude and Harold exchange "biographical exposition" monologues: Maude about her time in Viennese high society and subsequent rebellion, and Harold's notorious science experiment, with his subsequent realization that he enjoys being dead. THAT's all you need to know.
The most powerful half second in film. What was already a great movie becomes devastating when Harold registers her tattoo. Still makes me cry.
It was a short shot of the number...you really had to watch for it...
took my future wife to this film on our first date..... we just celebrated our 48th anniversary somehow!!!
Thank you for pointing out one of the great moments in this wonderful film.
I saw H&M in the theater and instantly loved it.
I watch it every time it appears on TCM...and watched it again recently on Netflix.
I was 19 when I first saw it, and identified with Harold.
I'm almost 70 and identify with Maud now.
I respect her choice to take leave of this life when she was ready. As difficult as it was for Harold - I love Maud's lessons about life being full of highs and lows. We can choose to embrace both,
And that life is a series of hellos and goodbyes.
"Go love some more," said Maude. Terrific advice.
Great commentary of a film I've seen hundreds of times since 1976. Ruth Gordon grew up in Quincy MA where I also grew up. There is a nice outdoor theater named after her there.
In the 70s my uncle had a huge room of classic films in his house. He also had a full size carbon spark theater projector that was steadied by a beam in the basement. Every Christmas we would watch a film. At 12yrs old I saw many films in that living room. Some were a bit too over the top for a young girl like Clockwork Orange. Harold and Maude was one of my favorites. I went on to study film in my life. I absolutely believe it was my Uncle's love of cinema that influenced my life. ❤
I totally missed this when I saw it decades ago. I love that CZcams allows me to stop and slow down movie scenes to discovered all kinds of intricacies that subtly play on the subconscious.
The movie is a masterpiece of understatement.
Why no mention of the great music score by Cat Stevens ?
I saw this movie for the very first time last month at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore, and it was a wonderful experience form start to finish. It was made even better by the audience's enthusiastically warm response throughout the runtime. Rarely has a film about such dark subject matter proven to have such a genuine heart of gold.
I saw this movie at a very old theater in Houston Texas as a teenager. And that's when I fell in love with not just this movie but movies in general that were off the mainstream beaten path.
I first saw H&M in theatre late '75 maybe? Since then I've seen it on a dozen or so times of last 4 decades....VHS/cd/cable, etc.......never was aware of the Holocaust taboo scene....thanks so much for your insight.....
I was aware of it after 45 years knowing this film.
I used to go see it at the old Rialto Theater in South Pasadena, CA. One of the best movies ever made.
Sometimes the most powerful images in film are the ones that are never directly discussed via dialogue. The tattoo scene in 'Harold and Maude' is such an image.
how about his iconic smile scene. like a top ten moment in all cinema
‘Maude’ was a nickname a classmate in H.S. journalism dubbed me. I’m 80 so I relate more than ever to Maude in the story. I didn’t steal any cars in my 79th year, but my late husband took his own life before I turned 80. I hope to live my best life in the spirit of ‘Maude’ 💘💞☮️
I really liked how you presented this. Will there be more Cinema slices like this?
Absolutely, we’re working on some now.
Wonderful video! Harold and Maude is one of my favorite movies!
Fia Skillman Thanks! We absolutely love it too. It’s pretty unique.
i think there is just a little more going on here, she delibaretly rolls up her sleeves when harold says shes beautiful. it seems as if she was showing him all of who she was at that moment.
Great post! Earlier in the film Maude mentions the story when she was younger and the man she loved, Frederic. "He was so serious" , "But that was all before".... It was never mentioned fully but It has always been my thought that Frederic was the one that reported Maude and her family to the Nazis.
What a thought. I wonder if that’s in any notes.
I have relatives who were murdered in Auschwitz. Their stories are specific. Their stories are not vague. And their stories are unambiguous. I love the movie Harold and Maude, but empty speculation about Maude's life outside what the movie presents is tone-deaf at best. There is nothing in the movie that persuasively links Maude's biography to Jewish heritage; not everyone at Auschwitz was Jewish, recall. But besides that, Maude unironically speaks glowingly of Frederick, whoever he was ("a doctor" and "so serious"). If you have to speculate, it's far more likely that Frederick is Jewish and Maude was deported with him for not rejecting him; but this, too, is vacuous speculation. That she might have such warm nostalgia for the person who betrayed her family to the Nazis is grotesque and groundless. As much as the movie is reaching for a profound statement here, it is too brief, too much like a throwaway shot, to be adequate to the moment. It has always seemed like an aside to me, at best, and that obviously bothers me. It is very much in the same spirit that Tom Skerritt (playing the hapless motorcycle cop in the movie) is listed in the credits as Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary. In the same way that the tattoo shown on Maude's arm does not accurately reproduce what an Auschwitz tattoo should look like, the motorcycle cop's name misspells Martin Bormann's (as "M. Borman"). See? The cop is Hitler's secretary. Get it? Ha ha ... "Don't be officious. You're not yourself when officious. That's the curse of a government job."
I always thought that the shot was quick to show that as soon as Harold saw it, Maude immediately told him to look at the sunset because she didn't want him to question the tattoo because she didn't want to talk about her experience as a holocaust inmate.
She also talks about Dreyfus and the seagulls who was in jail at the time. Someone wrote on a different website the following: "I remember about the tenth viewing I suddenly gasped and got chills during the seagull scene when I realized WHY she starts to talk about Dreyfuss and Devil's Island and the seagulls *right at at that moment*. She is addressing Harold's unspoken question about her experiences in the concentration camp. She is really talking about HERSELF and the attitude that she brought to the concentration camp. "Later on, HE realized that they had only been seagulls. But TO ME they will always be glorious birds." Seagulls are a symbol of freedom and she is telling Harold that she was able to keep her mind free and joyous even in the worst circumstances."
She IS talking about her concentration camp experience!
This is my favourite movie and has been since I watched it as a teenager. It's one of the few movies I can watch more than once without getting tired of it. I still notice things years later that I haven't yet. Like how the blood in the second "suicide" was the beets he'd been shoveling down at the dinner table 😂
Maude's tattoo was another 💔
Beets!
Brilliant commentary on a brilliant film.
There are not enough Maudes in the world.
More daisies than sunflowers.
You did a beautiful job with this! Thank you!!!! :)
This is my favorite scene in this movie
It really is fantastic.
Corrections: Harold is staging suicides before his mother decides he should get married, and Maude has been living absolutely carefree long before she'd turned 79 (her impending 80th birthday is obviously not the occasion for living like she does). And as succinct as the gesture about the tattoo may have been, for a movie full of great details, it's dispiriting that they didn't reproduce how an actual tattoo from someone imprisoned in Auschwitz would look. I understand what the gesture is trying to say, but given its historical inaccuracy, that it's shown as virtually a throwaway shot that you might miss, and that it connects with no other part of the movie, it's not hard to realize that some concentration camp survivors aren't going to be keen about it being here, especially as Maude is not Jewish. (Not, of course, that all people placed in concentration camps were Jewish.) Mind you, I'm not trying to sanctimoniously represent the Holocaust on behalf of my deceased relatives, and Harold and Maude remains one of my most beloved films, but it's tone-deaf to resort to such imagery in such small measure. Maude's imprisonment is also not the only reason she lives unbound as she does. She and her umbrella had already long before risked life and limb before "all that was before."
God Maude is a vision of loveliness in this scene and the whole movie. I wonder if this scene was a statement on western world privileged people and their depression, but it is said without judgement because Maude does not judge. It really is very beautifully done.
[m] Really enjoyed this!
Obviously it’s our first crack. We need to buy a mic and work out a wrinkle or two but that means a lot Mikey. Cheers.
I saw the tattoo, but I didn't think about it until later. Maude may have lost her whole family in the Holocaust, but she chose to embrace life and living freely, rather than dwelling on the tragedy of the past.
This has been my favorite movie for fifty years.
It teaches one you embrace life, find the joy in each, miserable moment and to spread the joy of living to those we come into contact with.
Great video! Thanks for making it.
Great stuff, thanks. Makes me want to watch more Ashby
Thank you for this!
Brilliant. Keep going.
Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, describes a scene of contemplation of the beauty of a sunrise. He was able to appreciate that beauty even though he was a prisoner in a concentration camp. The ability to identify beauty in things, in circumstances in the midst of indescribable evil and horror is what helped survive the camps.
I love this scene. I love the movie the writing the actors the music everything about it.
I was not too old when this movie came out.
I was in high school. Didn’t get such an older, younger relationship at the time.
I do remember the tattoo though.
I knew what that was, at the time.
I understand more, now that I am an older one.
yeah this movie was one hell of a trip loved it..it cam out 8 years before i was born and think i saw it when i was like 11..
Any further exposition about the tattoo would have been a mistake and robbed the moment of its quiet power. Suddenly we realize the horrors she must have witnessed and eventually leads her to her eccentric behaviour. We only get the smallest details of her past. A less confident director would have layered on the exposition and milked the tragedy instead of leaving it understated. Ruth Gordon deserved an Oscar nomination for her performance. It's every bit as good as her performance in Rosemary's Baby. There was even talk of doing a prequel of Maude before she met Harold. Thankfully it never went any further than the talking stage. I imagine it might have given us more insight into her past. I imagine the idea of film about a young man in his twenties falling in love with a 79 year old woman is going to make many people a bit queasy but I've never had an issue with this. Her obsession with life slowly eclipsed his obsession with death, symbolized in the very last scene that ends on a positive note he's abandoned those thoughts.
I love this movie. I am very glad I found your channel.
Well done you both. This brought me joy. ☮️
"" Cuz there's a million things to be, you know that there are...""
Greatest love story ever told.
loved this movie, saw it years ago
Absolute Bliss !!! Philadelphia USA
A great video about a great film :)
That's really kind of you to say, thanks. Hoping to make plenty more - spread the word!
Less than one second. Amazing. You can find me, too.
Excellent
Does Hardole end up with the last girl…??? Or is that assumed?
I think out of the 3 girls she’s the best match for him but after his date with her, that’s when he’s talking about marriage to Maude… I mean I can see after the end of the film him maybe reaching out to her. But also I could easily see him taking time for himself and meeting someone naturally.
I was under the impression Harold didn't know where the tattoo came from. But if he did that's great. I only just watched the movie for the first time the other day. Now I just have to unpack the parasol monologue scene.
Everyone then knew.
The parasol scene bothers me because it seems she thinks just bring her own free self -- which is of course important and sometimes difficult -- is enough and that she can or even should abandon collective action and any hope of revolution. But I consider this a neoliberal idea, the curse of the hippies. We still need revolution.
@@nineteenfortyeight6762 Although this comment is over 6 months old, I still felt compelled to reply.
Yes, collective action is needed, especially in today's political climate, but activism must start with an individual action and behavior. Most people are weak and complacent by nature, and are quite happy to accept the status quo and constant feed of 'proper gander.'
It's not until their comforts are threatened or taken away that they are forced to take notice. They will react with cries of loss of personal liberties with self-righteous indignation, but will continue to follow the script, doing what they're told, even if it's obviously harmful, but then retreat to their holes. (As in the pokey jibbyjabs).
The only way to start a movement is when one heroic individual bravely stands up to buck the 'Cyst Stem,' defy the tyranny, in hopes that leading by example, one other will follow.....and then another....and anoth....... .
So Maude was right all along. Lead by example. Bud was a perfect student, and she recognized that. It always starts with one...YOU!!
@@americangirlx4 Let's not forget that someone else will stand up and decry all those who "react with cries of loss of personal liberties with self-righteous indignation, but will continue to follow the script, doing what they're told, even if it's obviously harmful, but then retreat to their holes"
@@nineteenfortyeight6762 Harold and Maude was written (by a student) just after the crushing defeat of students in France in 1968 (Higgins wasn't in France), the same year Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated (and putting a hard chill on the most effective collective action movement in U.S. history since Temperance). A moment when the moment of political possibility (for whites) seemed on the wane (in the so-called "failure" of the student movement). It's not sufficiently accurate, but the main political rallying point for the students in the 60s (resistance to the draft) had definitely turned a corner; Vietnam was "winding down" in terms of being a living reality that might see a young person (say "you") being drafted; the anti-Vietnam vibe in the movie is very pronounced. My point is: it was becoming less and less clear "what next" for the forces unleashed by the 60s. It wasn't clear how or if collective action would function or succeed. Nixon announced the racist strategy of mass incarceration directed against Black folk (to halt Civil Rights); something not put into national force until Reagan. The 70s was a time of massive disillusionment; people then lamented "the kids of today" as the selfish "me generation" (this was genuinely the first time such a complaint was registered across the whole country). That selfishness gave way, to the kids of neoliberalism under Reagan, as an invisible norm such that it's hard to imagine what it would have bene like in the 60s anymore. This is why the Marxists (especially the regressive ones) love to condemn identity politics, failing to take account of the fact that Continental philosophy (Foucault, Lyotard) were declare all claims to "identity" as false in the same moment that Black folk were demanding to be treated as full human beings for once. It's true that "identity politics" boils down to a form of neoliberalism, but being opposed to it ignores the fact that "identity groups" achieve liberation precisely by their collective identity. It's not that this isn't a problem. Marriage equality only assured equality for those who "pair up," not for polyamorous or polygamous people or polycules; marriage equality affords a new group access to ruling class (hegemonic, oppressive) social goodies (martial tax breaks, other privileges of marriage, etc). What the collective movement that Dr Martin Luther King Jr genuinely accomplished was ending outright terrorism against Black folk in the south. But U.S. racism was not prepared to fully admit "Black" people into the oppressor class (no more than it has ever admitted Indigenous people). And just as Indigenous people experienced, initially at exterminating gunpoint and later through juridical abuse by the U.S. courts, hostile opposition, so did the collective Black power movements of Civil Rights experience lethal opposition. A racist tradition that continues to this day when Black Lives Matter is branded a terrorist organization. Every time a riot happens (a definitively collective action), repressive forces take advantage of the moment to further beat back a progressive movement. This was even true on 6 January, although few people refer to it as a riot. But it's a genuinely collective action--badly organized, too short-lived, lacking in vision; clearly, Occupy Wall Street was much more cogent.
What I wish you would take more seriously is an acknowledgment of the repressive violence directed at people who would act, collectively or not. I said that Temperance was an astonishing thing, but actually, the labor movements of the early half of the 20th century are probably the most heartening, and violent, example; women's suffrage was quite widespread but peaceful by comparison. As someone who identifies as male, I feel irresponsible saying this, but I think history shows that when women resist, state violence is much less prone to take violent action. There was a railway strike (in Senegal, if memory serves), where the usual repressive violence was directed against male railway strikers (women supported them by fixing lunches and tending wounds); eventually, though, the men were depleted; women took the front lines, and eventually victory was won by those on strike. As a male, I feel irresponsible asking my sisters to lead, to take the helm. They already do more than their fair share, but I'm sure that we males can make their lunches and tend their wounds while they picket, while they take collective action. I don't think state violence will be as immediately or as harshly applied (although Power in the United States is so hollowed out and inhuman at this point, that I wouldn't put it past them).
What I wish you would take more seriously are the stakes involved in collective action. Students organizing locally on behalf of Palestine are facing not the threat of arrest (Dr Martin Luther King Jr and others have already demonstrated how empowering it can be to be together in a jail; the Russian revolutionaries learned the same, in many ways, their incarceration by the Tsar allowed them to meet one another, and network). No, the students are likely to be expelled from school, which is a potentially devastating socioeconomic blow, all the more so for foreign exchange students, with parents who are banking on them getting a degree in engineering or becoming a doctor. You are asking young people to risk their lives, and that's a fair ask, if the organization behind it is genuine and cunning and thought out, as was the case with the campaigns for Civil Rights. It takes training. It takes strategy. It takes preparation. It's not about just showing up en masse and waving a sign. The resistance that Maude was involved in was simple mass protest, it sounds like. It doesn't sound like there was a campaign, training, a long-term plan. She wasn't a leader and she was at least willing to show up (although it's a fair question to ask whether supporting a "pointless" or "ineffective" form of protest is really actually a "good" thing at all). Gandhi didn't just "decide" to up and walk to the coast for salt, but he did tap into a sense of discontent no less powerfully than Mohamed Bouazizi did with his act of self-immolation.
What I wish you would take more seriously is the fact that people don't even want to know their neighbors, much less get involved in collective action. I will never pat someone on the back for saying that they don't show up, because there's not actually sufficient organization to get anything done. 99% of the time, all that means is, "I don't want to." But the "rationale" for that sense of anti-solidarity (never mind the co-optation of political activity through online petitions and so forth) contains a similar kernel of reality that keeps the poor from spontaneously overrunning everything: rising up gets an individual beat down that isn't experienced collectively. A certain point of desperation has to be reached before people feel forced to risk everything--things like war, the murder of Trayvon Martin, the murder of George Floyd, Bouazizi's suicide, these things can provide the spark. That "Defund the Police" became an actual slogan, the fact that "Black Lives Matter" was rekindled as a phrase after being curb-stomped into complete infamy, are promising signs. I think people are already suffering enough, are already so self-dehumanizing in the patterns that they think of as "living" that they are ready to leap out of the ruts. But, instead, they zombie along. And it is really disingenuous of you to call for changes if you are not (1) training people in non-violent resistance or (2) being trained in non-violent resistance. Non-violent resistance (I think, especially by women) will work. How are the Gulabi Gang doing these days? Popular anarchy is flat-out stupid. I prefer to look to the community organizing of the Black Panthers (which historically had more women than men, but you'd never know from the racist coverage). How one is supposed to get water, power, and shelter when those public goods are controlled by monied interests is a problem that needs solving. Resisting people who say there's nothing to be done is, of course, the first necessary step. Not letting the tankies wreck ("don't let the better be the enemy of the good") but also not failing to listen to the cogent criticisms they offer about ineffective pathways of resistance. It takes organization, it takes work, it takes intelligence, audacity, and leadership, and short of that, asking people to participate is morally irresponsible.
Brilliant
I hope I drive as well as Maude when I’m that age
Thanks
You should invest in a much better microphone...
I missed it. WOW WOW
Maude was in hell... And she thrived!
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there wasn’t a better actress than Ruth Gordon, except maybe Julie Christie…
Pog
OG pog.
This was a great analysis but i think it’s a little disturbing to keep calling Harold a teenage boy when he is 19 so legally an adult and also played by a 22 year old
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