Part of Three Films by Elaine May
Elaine May made her directorial debut with this seminal two-hander, loosely based on a short story by Jack Ritchie. Walter Matthau gives a signature performance as Henry Graham, the playboy failson scion of a prominent New York family who learns that he’s blown through his own inheritance and is effectively broke. He gets the idea to marry into money and subsequently give his bride the Bluebeard treatment — and he sets his sights on the supremely awkward, wealthy odd-bird botany professor Henrietta Lowell (May). One of cinema’s great debut features, A NEW LEAF is a dark-ish love story, tender and cynical in equal measure, whose wry, madcap pleasures make it an enduringly influential high-water mark for screen comedy. (Synopsis from Film at Lincoln Center)
“This is a most auspicious film debut. A respect for the intelligence of her audiences abounds in the precision and understatement of her comedy, written, directed and performed…. One of the funniest and most tender films I have ever seen.” —Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune (Apr 2, 1971) “A NEW LEAF achieves the nutty and improbable grandeur of the best movie comedies of the past. Indeed Elaine May carries us off into this crazy world of her own invention in a way that I'd come to think simply wasn't possible any more.” —Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times (Apr 2, 1971) “Elaine May’s antic and macabre 1971 comedy reveals the essence of marital love more brutally than many melodramas.” —Richard Brody, New Yorker
