A NEW LEAF: May Flowers

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

 

Director: Elaine May
Writer: Elaine May

Cast: Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, George Rose, James Coco, Doris Roberts

Runtime: 102 mins.

1971

Between 1949 and 1979, fourteen feature films were directed by women. That's 0.19% of all films released. Before A New Leaf, Ida Lupino was the last woman to be given a directing contract in Hollywood, and the lion's share of her work was in the early '50s. Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Elaine May: the only three women to be inducted into the Director's Guild of America for decades.

The irony is that May stumbled into this gig somewhat accidentally. Having found fame in an improvisational comedy duo with (soon-to-be-great filmmaker) Mike Nichols, Elaine May merely intended to adapt A New Leaf from a Jack Ritchie story and sell the script off. Her agent pulled for her to direct, for which she was paid a paltry $50,000. She resisted the studio's preference of Carol Channing for the female lead because she felt the story belonged to Walter Matthau's character and wanted the actress to 'disappear.' Instead of allowing her to select her own lead, Paramount made an ultimatum. May could star in the film if she acted for free.

A fitting backdrop for a story of slimy exploitation. Matthau plays Henry Graham, a trust fund parasite who has been blithely squandering his wealth for no reason beyond shortsightedness. It turns out being broke comes along with a neverending onslaught of unpleasantness. Graham concocts a plan to marry a wealthy woman on a brisk timetable, pay off his debts, then matter-of-factly murder her so that his lifestyle may continue. A New Leaf is a tale of the colossal effort a man will go through to maintain his behavior.

Matthau correctly plays Graham as a real son of a bitch. He's blithe, snidely, self-obsessed. The large chunk of runtime before Graham's love interest is introduced languishes in Graham's misery as he takes a tour through a bourgeois lifestyle soon to be ripped from his soft hands. Graham repeatedly mutters "I'm poor," while wandering his city like a ghost, with a melodramatic orchestra poking fun at his despondency.

Graham is so irredeemable that he sparks a kind of playful indifference in us. "I don't want to share things, I want to own them all by myself!" he gripes, unable to conceive of the humanity of others. His cruelty is emphasized even more in May's unfinished cut of the film, which would have been over an hour longer and featured Graham murdering two other fellows in the pursuit of his ends. I do not know if that cut would have been better, but it certainly would have helped contextualize the film's ambivalence towards Graham. The sad truth is that we will never know; as the editing process dragged on, both Walter Matthau and the Paramount executives expressed doubt in May's capacity to pull off the Writer/Director/Actor triple crown. Paramount took final cut away from her and shaved the edges off May's skewering of the romantic comedy.

That misogyny-laden lack of faith is all the more galling because Elaine May is the uncontested highlight of the production. Her Henrietta Lowell is the perfect mark-- awkward, socially outcast, pliable, isolated, obsessively botanical. The great twist is that despite Graham's best attempts to exert his will, it is Henrietta's desire that shapes everything. May never overplays Henrietta's agency. The performance is a brilliant collection of tics and fumbling physical comedy that keeps us guessing about what Henrietta really thinks. May is so charismatic that even as she tries to disappear, the film resolves itself around her. "I've discovered a true species," she beams, and despite Graham's lack of interest in fronds, he discovers that he is happy for her. To quote Jacques Lacan, "Desire is the Desire of the Other's Desire."

I do not know which of May's three roles suits her best. As Writer, she's put together a sharp script. The film is comically straightforward in verbalizing its character motivations, allowing depth and complexity to creep in via performance and set design. May likes to repeat short phrases over and over within a scene. An accountant brainstorms fifteen different ways to tell Graham he's 'exhausted his capital,' a partygoer keeps bringing up that he 'sprayed his apples' for disease, Graham repeats that a bounced 'check must be paid' as if the mantra is the only thing anchoring him to existence. These anxious recurrences are a useful way to clue us in to character fixations, and they often set up for hilarious callbacks.

May may make her most masterful choices directorially. A New Leaf is confidently constructed. The visuals hew close enough to naturalism that we are never distracted, but the film is brimming with exaggerations in costume, set, and coloration. Graham's fumbling attempt to beg money from his Uncle (James Coco) typifies this impulse. The Uncle gorges himself on a massive lunch platter in an ostentatious bright red robe while Graham sits slightly askew from the table, looking small and lost. Then there are the more ostentatious compositions, like a standing mirror that relays Graham's fantasy fears, or the above image of Graham plotting Henrietta's demise while she precariously combs through the foliage.

Blocking is a particular highlight throughout. May takes advantage of every opportunity to choreograph crowd scenes that break open the tortured intimacy between Henry and Henrietta. A wedding, a firing, a dinner party-- whenever there are many bodies on screen, May arranges them to maximize the impact of the comedic and emotional beats.

All this resolves into a brashly colorful sunset denouement, a beautiful moment that feels earned despite (because of?) the movie's relentless nastiness. Graham's resolve crumbles, but surely it is for the best. He has never more self-actualized then when trying to ruin the one good thing he has.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS