A New Leaf<\/em> starts with a weak heartbeat. If that doesn’t clue you in to the kind of romance on offer, stick around for a minute and you’ll find out the pulse belongs to a Ferrari 275 GTB\/4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI liked it because I realized the guy, the hero, was going to kill this woman,\u201d said writer-director-star Elaine May in a Halley\u2019s Comet-rare interview for Film Comment<\/em><\/a>. \u201cAnd I thought he\u2019s going to kill her and he\u2019s not going to realize that he likes her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attempted murderer in question is Henry Graham, the kind of Ferrari owner that only refers to it by model number. His trusty steed is so untrusty that Henry has to take it into the shop every time he drives it. \u201cCarbon on the valves,\u201d they say. But to a man like Henry, the fussier something is, the more valuable it must be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is why the unexpectedly broke Henry tries to withhold the car from the rest of his collateral when pitching his filthier, richer uncle for a loan. But blood isn\u2019t much thicker than a dotted line, so the best deal he can get is $50,000 and six weeks to marry a woman wealthy enough to pay it back. The murder is just because he doesn\u2019t like people in general: \u201cShe\u2019ll be everywhere… touching<\/em> things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The terminally eligible Henry calls to mind a Cary Grant type, even down to his provenance; Jack Ritchie\u2019s original short story, \u201cThe Green Heart,\u201d first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Mystery Magazine. Walter Matthau, however, is not a Cary Grant type. Among the supper club crowd, he\u2019s a kissed frog stuck just shy of princehood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May wanted Christopher Plummer. Paramount wouldn\u2019t foot the bill without Matthau, still white-hot off a more famous movie about odd coupling. But when the powers that be insisted on Carol Channing for a better half, the writer came to his rescue. \u201cIt has to be someone who really disappears,\u201d she insisted. \u201cIt\u2019s the guy\u2019s movie.\u201d The studio offered to let her do the disappearing (for no additional pay) if she cared that much about it. So Elaine May starred for the same reason she directed \u2013 self-defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The girl arrives in the guy\u2019s movie 27 minutes in, blocked by a hat. Her first words come three minutes later, an omen: \u201cI\u2019m terribly sorry.\u201d In between, she drops two gloves, a spoon, and a teacup. \u201cDid I say she was primitive?\u201d seethes Henry after successfully popping the question, \u201cI retract that \u2013 she\u2019s feral.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But bug-eyed botanist Henrietta Lowell refuses to annoy. The only victims of her pathological butterfingers are the snobs that sneer behind her back and the husband plotting her demise in front. Her expletive of choice is \u201cheavens.\u201d She\u2019s flustered by the very thought of her suitor\u2019s presence. If Henry seriously intends on turning her into mulch, May-the-actress doesn\u2019t make it easy for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May learned to love Matthau, not that he made it easy \u2013 it took him a while to call her anything but \u201cMrs. Hitler\u201d on set. She also learned to love the process, albeit the hardest way possible. The first-time filmmaker was so exacting about her first cut that it took ten months of editing and ran three hours long. Paramount head Robert Evans hacked it down to 102 minutes and sentenced it to theaters. What A New Leaf<\/em> lost in translation is what drew May to the story in the first place \u2013 \u201cI wanted to do the first comedy in which someone got away with murder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As released, Henry doesn\u2019t kill any of his competition for Henrietta\u2019s fortune. Instead, he merely studies her passion. Tolerates her favorite drink. Balances her books. Brews her coffee. Cooks her dinner. Helps her get her head through the correct hole of a nightgown for a world-record two minutes. Etcetera. Henry\u2019s saint-patient butler Harold provides the moment of clarity: \u201cThis very helplessness has been the stimulus of your own amazing new competence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n More ink has been spilled about Elaine May\u2019s celluloid footprint than her directorial voice – so what <\/em>if her third film, Mikey & Nicky<\/em>, took triple the yardage of Gone With The Wind<\/em>. Her competence has been called into question since she became the third woman ever inducted into the Director\u2019s Guild of America. On A New Leaf<\/em>, May was the first to wonder; she had to ask comedy partner Mike Nichols, already two movies deep in his own directing career, how to say, \u201cAction.\u201d But by the end, she wasn\u2019t just competent, but meticulous. Fussy, even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Love is cleaning the carbon off the valves. Isn\u2019t that romantic? Like Henry says, when Henrietta asks if he\u2019d mind spending the rest of his life pruning the tags off her sweaters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not terribly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “A New Leaf” is available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/new-leaf2-1024x637.jpg\")
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To his credit, he applies himself to homicide. Henry commits her frond trivia to memory, making an absolute meal out of the word \u201cBougainvillea\u201d days after first hearing it. He proposes by comparing their star-crossed taxonomies. By the time Henrietta discovers her own species, Alsophila grahami<\/em>, Henry has studied enough to understand exactly what she\u2019s sacrificing by naming it in his honor. Until then it\u2019s an unspoken sight gag that anyone this rich would have the complexion of a basset hound, but in that moment of realization, Matthau lets all his lines show \u2013 the tin man has carbon on his valves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n