Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story

Directed by Daniel Raim

Release Year: 2016
Running time: 94
Country:
Genres: Documentary
Subjects: Film Studies
$9.99 - Classroom Rights
MSRP: $29.95
$249.00 - With PPR (less than 50 people)
$349.00 - With PPR
$499.00 - With DSL
$499.00 - With DSL and PPR
MSRP: $599.00
Screening Request
Directed by: Daniel Raim

Movie fans know the work of Harold and Lillian Michelson, even if they don’t recognize the names. Working largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian left an indelible mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and many more. Through an engaging mix of love letters, film clips and candid conversations with Harold and Lillian, Danny DeVito, Mel Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola and others, this deeply engaging documentary from Academy Award®-nominated director Daniel Raim offers both a moving portrait of a marriage and a celebration of the unknown talents that help shape the films we love. 

HAROLD AND LILLIAN opened in New York on April 28 and Los Angeles on May 12.

Watch a clip about Harold’s work on Hitchcock's THE BIRDS at IndieWire.

To book this film please contact Nancy Gerstman or Emily Russo or call 212-274-1989.

Download a promotional flyer template for your screening of HAROLD AND LILLIAN here.

Reviews

CAPTIVATING... The delightful duo at the center of Raim’s film are storyboard artist Harold Michelson and researcher Lillian Michelson, whose 60-year marriage began in 1947 and ended with Harold’s death at age 87. Subtitled “A Hollywood Love Story,” the doc chronicles not just their mutual adoration and respect, but also Hollywood’s love for them, and the joy they derived from their work. Their personal story is no less fascinating than their experiences working on hundreds of movies, together and separately.

- Sheri Linden - Los Angeles Times
 

Truly charming...A terrifically moving human story!

- Glenn Kenny - Vanity Fair
 

You don’t have to be a movie buff to fall in love with the story of Harold and Lillian Michelson. Their sixty-year marriage—with more than its share of ups and downs—would be compelling enough... Be warned: you may tear up, as I did, toward the end of this affectionate tribute.

- Leonard Maltin - LeonardMaltin.com
 

CRITICS' PICK! Charming... Like flipping through misplaced leaves in a photo book, the documentary maintains a free-flowing tone as it uncovers the work that went into creating some of the indelible scenes in Hollywood history.

- Monica Castillo - The New York Times
 

For an hour and a half, this charming little movie, with its chatty talking heads and its sweet-natured subjects, offers a glimpse into the lives of two fascinating people whom I had never heard of, and who shared an unlikely life filled with achievements and setbacks, wonder and pain.

- Bilge Ebiri - The Village Voice
 

The film’s real ace in the hole, however, proves to be Lillian, an endlessly quotable interview subject whose pixyish presence can’t mask the sense that she knows exactly where all of the industry bodies are buried.

- Andrew Wright - The Stranger
 

Beautiful... The stories Lillian tells are a treasure-trove of personal and professional anecdotes, doubling as a side history of Hollywood itself. But Harold and Lillian is most affecting as a tribute to their marriage... In a business where individual success waxes and wanes, and each new production is a job that will eventually be lost, the Michelsons rode out its crazy vicissitudes with something approaching harmony and grace. Theirs is a model few will ever get to follow.

- Scott Tobias - NPR.org
 

One of the very best documentaries ever made about movies...I have rarely seen any movie, fact or fiction, that was quite so suffused with love—movie love and human love—as this one.

- David Noh - Film Journal
 

An awesome film... funny, heartbreaking, and packed with delicious film lore.

- Ken Kwapis - director of The Office
 

Daniel Raim's outstanding documentary quickly becomes one of the best I have seen in years...Not only a great window into the past of cinema looking ahead but such a touching and beautiful story on the love of cinema and the love that cinema can have on two amazing people. Tears of joy at the end of this film, and highly recommended even if you have the slightest interest in just how important things behind the scenes can be.

- Jason Whyte - eFilmCritic
 

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