“A New Leaf” (1971) — written, directed and graced with a gutsy performance by Elaine May — is a deranged rom-com in the guise of a classically constructed Hollywood farce. It’s also an unclassifiable psychodrama. May not only acted out onscreen but behind the scenes, filing a lawsuit against Paramount after the studio shortened her original three-hour cut by over a third.
Someday perhaps, that version will surface. Until then this 4K restoration of the movie as released, revived for a week at the IFC Center, offers ample evidence of May’s comic genius.
Courageous bordering on foolhardy for someone directing her first Hollywood production, May wrote a part and cast herself as a dithering klutz devoted to the study of plants. Henrietta, her poignantly trusting alter ego, is a wealthy heiress wooed and won by the horrible Henry (Walter Matthau), an entitled spendthrift who has exhausted his trust fund and, given his misogyny, relishes the idea of murdering his myopic bride. “Never have I seen one woman in whom every social grace was so lacking,” he tells his valet (George Rose), adding, “She has to be vacuumed every time she eats.”
“A New Leaf” pivots on the scenes between the irascible would-be Bluebeard and the lovestruck nerdy botanist, a wallflower whose romantic dreams include discovering a new species of fern. The title is a pun pointing to the movie’s punchline. (Paramount cut two murders and at least one fantasy sequence, although the denouement is essentially the same.)
Having given her characters matching names, which might be shortened to He and She, May creates a couple with unexpected chemistry, inhabiting their folie à deux as fully as the Marx Brothers were at home in their particular universe. (Indeed, although playing cartoon WASPs, May and Matthau were both children of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, surviving chaotic urban childhoods to make it on Broadway and beyond.) The New York Times critic Vincent Canby loved “A New Leaf,” comparing it to silent slapstick and 1930s screwball comedy in his initial review and bracketing May with the famously misanthropic actor and comedian W.C. Fields in a follow-up piece.
Rather than plants, May is a student of human nature. Henry’s pathological fear of women is complemented by Henrietta’s neurotic lack of self-esteem. Matthau’s over-assertive performance is countered by May’s no less insistent hyper-apologetic compliance — in which, using a variety of tics, she manages to neutralize without concealing her physical attractiveness.
A movie of outsized characters and subtle pleasures, “A New Leaf” is predicated on outlandish variations on familiar material. Henry and Henrietta meet cute at a society reception where she destroys an expensive carpet by twice spilling her teacup. Henry makes his proposal kneeling on the broken glass littering another ruined carpet. Their wedding, during which Henrietta is given away by her sobbing lawyer (Jack Weston), is heralded by the sound of a flushing toilet. The wedding night features Henry’s prolonged struggle to redirect Henrietta, hopelessly entangled in a single sleeve of her Grecian nightgown, in a search for the correct “armhole.”
There a several ways to enjoy “A New Leaf.” One way is to imagine May in costume, if not character, directing the action on set.
A New Leaf
Through Thursday at the IFC Center, Manhattan; ifccenter.com.
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