Memorable Movie Moment: Harold & Maude Zoom Shot

Remembrance Day made me think of this shot (again): during a montage there’s an amazing shot in a military graveyard:

Frame of Harold & Maude picnicking amid a few gravestones – the gravestones making a pattern around them… then zoom out… and zoom out… and zoom out… and zoom out… to an extreme wide shot of the same picnic – now minute in the frame and the gravestones now make a new pattern around them.

Wow! What an expensive zoom lens that must have been! Boy did they know where to spend the production money to maximize the budgeting “getting to the screen.”

And it was so much more than “just a nice shot.” It added another unique layer of meaning to the story. You need to see the reveal from cosy (?) picnic to Harold & Maude being dwarfed by the sheer number of gravestones around them… and living the picnic there in perfect harmony with their surroundings. How do they each feel about death? Can we feel them finding life as they look at and for death? A powerful shot indeed. I’m chilled at how this shot reaches me. The true magic of this storytelling medium.

Cheers & a good shoot to you!
Deb