Review: Elaine May’s A New Leaf on Olive Films Signature Blu-ray

This black-hearted romantic comedy gets a sparkling new restoration and some solid supplements as part of Olive Films’s Signature line.

A New LeafFor her directorial debut, writer and actress Elaine May adapted a short story by Jack Ritchie titled “The Green Heart.” An inveterate perfectionist, she reportedly turned out a three-hour cut of the film that included several added subplots and a body count, effectively plunging the film a ways down that slippery slope of directorial excess, the likes of which culminated in notorious flops like Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate and May’s own Ishtar. (Neither of these films, it should be mentioned, is nearly as bad as their reputations suggest.) Compared to those sprawling, admittedly indulgent works, however, A New Leaf is a wryly modest bit of hilarity, written with an ear perfectly attuned to the ornate thrust of its opulent dialogue, and peopled with a rogue’s gallery of richly risible bit players.

Spoiled rotten by a life of luxury and temperamentally unprepared for anything approaching gainful employ, Henry Graham (Walter Matthau) has arrived at a rather incommodious crossroads. His spendthrift ways have plunged him into penury, conveyed with an amusing montage populated by expensively malfunctioning vehicles, punctuated by his affectless plaint, “Carbon on the valves.” Faced with a number of equally unpleasant alternatives, Henry persuades himself that he “needs must marry” (as the Bard so lightly puts it). Granted, for Henry, this arrangement is merely a matter of principle. As his redoubtable butler, Harold (George Rose), says: “How many men have your devotion to form, sir? You have managed, in your own lifetime, Mr. Graham, to keep alive traditions that were dead before you were born.” For Henry, it stands to reason, only an incalculably wealthy heiress will fit the bill. For, you see, he doesn’t intend to remain wedded very long. Henry’s attempts to find a suitable partner yield at least one nugget of comedic gold in his poolside run-in with buxom Renee Taylor. As she reaches to unclasp her bikini top, he yowls in dismay, “No! Don’t let them out!” Funny, yes, but it also neatly points up Henry’s fundamental asexual (maybe even anti-sexual) narcissism.

Enter Henrietta (May), a horticulturalist whose watchword is a flustered “Heavens!” Tapping into her improvisatory experience, May convincingly invests Henrietta with a spastic charm and at the same time a childlike guilelessness, making her the perfect foil for Matthau’s monster of self-absorption. Alas, the course of true love never did run smooth. For Henry and Henrietta, the primary speed bump along the road to wedded bliss—or, as Henry would have it, an early grave for our Miss Lowell—comes in the form of lovelorn litigator McPherson (Jack Weston). McPherson has what might generously be called a conflict of interest when it comes to Henrietta: He’s romantically pursued her for many a year, all the while grossly mismanaging her estate. Bounteous grist for May’s comic mill arises from Henry’s devious attempts to thwart McPherson’s amorous advances, and then from his efforts to clean up the monetary morass McPherson has left in his wake.

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And so, the long-anticipated murder attempt that occupies A New Leaf’s final act arrives as something of an anticlimax. More than anything, this can be attributed to Henry’s precipitous change of heart, which “goes green” with renewed ardor. Admittedly, this has as much to do with the source material as it does with the supposed tampering of studio know-it-alls. Still, for all that Henry’s about-face is handled with aplomb by Matthau, it blunts the film’s satirical edge. What looks, at least during its gloriously overwrought and inky-black first two acts, to be developing into a shrewd contemporary take on Ealing Studio’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, ultimately winds up a good-natured companion piece to, say, Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie. Heavens!

Image/Sound

Olive Films presents A New Leaf in a sparkling new 4K restoration scanned from the camera negative. The image shows major improvements in clarity, depth, and detail over the studio’s 2012 Blu-ray. Grain looks better regulated. Colors are brighter, bolder, and more densely saturated. Black levels are deeper, though there are traces of crush evident in some of the darker scenes, as well as a few stray speckles here and there. The Master Audio mono track sounds somewhat stronger and cleaner than the already excellent track on Olive’s earlier edition.

Extras

Despite some protracted silences, film scholar Maya Montanez Smukler’s commentary track provides a wide range of information on the film’s actors, storyline, and production history. There are also some trenchant observations about the history of women in film, the shifting values of the studio system, and the vicissitudes of the romantic comedy through the 1960s and ’70s. Assistant editor Angelo Corrao relates his impressions of the pitched battles between Elaine May and the studio over A New Leaf’s content and approach, hacking the film down from its initial three-hour cut, and some of May’s cigar-related peculiarities in the editing room. Filmmaker Amy Heckerling discusses drawing inspiration from May’s career, the historical plight of women directors, the idiosyncratic female characters of A New Leaf, and the current corporate mentality in Hollywood. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s insightful essay on May’s career is available both on screen and in the illustrated booklet, which also includes Jack Ritchie’s original story.

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Overall

Elaine May’s black-hearted romantic comedy gets a sparkling new restoration and some solid supplements as part of Olive Films’s Signature line.

Score: 
 Cast: Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston, George Rose, James Coco, Doris Roberts, Renee Taylor, David Doyle, William Redfield  Director: Elaine May  Screenwriter: Elaine May  Distributor: Olive Films  Running Time: 102 min  Rating: G  Year: 1971  Release Date: December 5, 2017  Buy: Video

Budd Wilkins

Budd Wilkins's writing has appeared in Film Journal International and Video Watchdog. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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