Canon Entry - A New Leaf (1971)
Inspired by the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die, Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorite films and other lists, I am striving to come up with my own personal canon of films.
In learning more about director Elaine May, the more I am convinced about how much her gender was a major factor in the brevity of her career as a director. She had the reputation for being difficult and not listening to advice, especially from the higher-ups. What these reports fail to mention is that the other directors of the 70’s (when three out of her four movies were made) were far more demanding and egotistical than she ever was. Coppola’s huge ego was the subject of a whole documentary, Hearts of Darkness, and Kubrick was notorious for disregarding the well-being of his actors for the sake of his art. They were tolerated because they were successful, and it was easier to sell their boldly unique works as the product of mad genius.
A New Leaf doesn’t seem like much compared to the epics her male colleagues became famous for. Walter Matthau plays Henry Graham, a playboy with a profligate spending habit that bankrupts him and forces him to ask his calloused uncle for a loan. Having no apparent real-world skills, Graham believes his only recourse is to marry a wealthy heiress, and after a series of failed and bizarre encounters, he finally stumbles on Elaine May’s Henrietta Lowell, a botany professor who is also independently wealthy. Her awkwardness and general lack of finesse draws Graham like a shark to blood, and through wit driven by desperation he manages to convince her to marry him. But Graham’s intention all long had been to kill whoever was foolish enough to marry him so that he could spend his spouse’s fortune in peace.
For a first-time director, May had a very good idea for economic cinematic language. She had made her name as half of the famous comic duo Nichols (of later The Graduate and other films' fame) and May, and they both wrote material for their act. Even later in her life, when she had decidedly stepped away from directing films, she was well-known as a screenwriter and script doctor. The first fifteen minutes of this film are a masterpiece of efficient comic storytelling. She knows that a scene can do so much more than just convey information. The montage of the series of couriers who are trying to inform Graham of his bankruptcy is full of brilliant bits, such as when one of them is riding on a horse after Graham, and the horse slowly collapses with perfect comic timing.
The film bristles with visual and aural style as well. When Graham visits his uncle, our first introduction to the latter is him with his mouth wide open seeming to consume Graham’s head in a derisive guffaw. There is also the computing sound inside Graham’s head as he tries to calculate ways to kill off Henrietta. So many modern comedies are so flat and talky that this film is strangely miles ahead of its time with its cinematic inventiveness. Consider the scene in which Graham is trying to help Henrietta with a confusing Grecian nightgown. The scene goes on for longer than necessary since May had made the nightgown deliberately impossible to figure out without Matthau’s knowledge. Yet it is also one of the most memorable scenes in the movie. Few directors would have the courage to make a scene play out that long. This film is also several years before Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, which was similarly praised for its inventiveness, yet it is not impossible to think that a young Woody Allen carefully watched and studied Nichols and May’s skits and perhaps this film. In fact, she would appear in Small Time Crooks and Crisis in Six Scenes later in Allen’s career.
Of course A New Leaf would be nothing without the couple at the center. The film isn’t a romantic comedy in the traditional sense. The relationship between Henry and Henrietta verges on platonic, since both seem like asexual beings. (Henry actively flees from the possibility of exposed breasts from one of the women he courts before Henrietta.) Their dynamic is almost more of a father and a daughter with Henry’s pragmatism and Henrietta’s naivete clashing in amusing ways. The dynamic isn’t creepy though since there is no sexual chemistry between the two, which is not a detriment to the movie. A lot of the charm is seeing Henry doing good despite wanting to be extremely selfish because of how thoroughly Henrietta trusts him.
It should be noted that May disavowed this film because of studio interference. She was forced to cut about an hour from her film. She was a female director making her first feature, so it wasn’t surprising that she had to meet their demands. As tempting as it would be to see Elaine May as a sort of martyr, but frankly, I think the studio made the right call. The original film would have been considerably darker, with Henry actually pulling off some murders successfully of people getting in the way. I still would have liked to see May’s cut, but the film is so good as it is, and the original movie might have collapsed under its own weight. Then again, plenty of male directors were allowed to take huge risks at the beginning of their careers too, albeit with a lot of complaining and brandishing of egos.
Despite this, I still wonder how American comedy would have been different if Elaine May had been as prolific as Woody Allen. Judging from this and The Heartbreak Kid, we would have seen American masculinity torn apart in ways that no man ever could. We would perhaps have seen better roles for women and perhaps we wouldn’t be inundated with comedies about man-children. At the very least, May’s example would inspire future female directors lucky enough to see and be influenced by her work, which should be more frequent as she is experiencing a bit of revival nearly 30 years after her last film.