Before today I’d never once seen even a portion of Elaine May‘s A New Leaf (Paramount, 3.11.71). But now I have. Two clips, to be exact.
It seems obvious that May’s deadpan black comedy was (and is) very well written as well as steadily, confidently paced (no hurry or worry), and that May and Walter Matthau had great, low-key fun as the two leads, and that Gayne Rescher‘s cinematography is most agreeably pro-level.
A 55th anniversary 4K restoration of A New Leaf will open at Manhattan’s IFC Center on Friday, 5.15.
It was well reviewed by all the top-dog critics (“The picture as it now stands is very funny indeed, but more charming than uproarious, and quite surprisingly romantic” — Molly Haskell), but Joe and Jane Popcorn weren’t in the mood or something.
“In what would become a hallmark for Elaine May, the film’s original $1.8 million budget shot up to over $4 million by the time it was completed. Shooting went 40 days over schedule, and editing took over ten months. Similar problems dogged her subsequent projects, Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar.
“During shooting, producer Howard W. Koch tried to have May replaced, but she had put a $200,000 (equivalent to $1.6 million in 2025) penalty clause into her contract, and he was persuaded to keep her.
Alternate versions:
“After May would not show Paramount Pictures a rough cut of the film ten months into editing, Robert Evans took away the film from her and recut it, although she had the right to approve the final cut in her contract. May’s version was rumored to run 180 minutes; Evans shortened it to 102 minutes. Angered by the alterations, May tried to take her name off the film, and unsuccessfully sued Paramount to keep it from being released.
“The original story included a subplot in which Henry discovers from the household accounts that Henrietta is being blackmailed on dubious grounds by lawyer Andy McPherson (Jack Weston), and another character played by William Hickey. Henry poisons both of them. This darkly casts Henry’s eventual acceptance of a conventional life with Henrietta as his ‘sentence.'”