DVD of the Week: Elaine May’s “A New Leaf”

Elaine May was already famous as a comedian from her partnership with Mike Nichols when her first feature, “A New Leaf,” was released, in 1971, after having been drastically recut by Paramount. (They reduced it from three hours to an hour forty-two.) The story—a black comedy about a dissolute heir (Walter Matthau) who, after losing his money, looks for an heiress to marry and kill, and finds one (played by May herself)—included two additional murders that Paramount cut out. In an interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum, May said that the studio deferred to the strictures of the Production Code. As released, the movie, which I discuss in the clip above, includes a fantasy montage that folds in some of the outtakes; the sequence is both funny and sensible, yet leaves tantalizing hints of May’s even wilder and more macabre visions. According to Rosenbaum, she “attempted to sue Paramount to block the release of their re-edited version.” I hope that the footage—or even May’s own cut—exists and will appear on a future video release. Nonetheless, the film that survives is a marvel of comic invention—and, more surprisingly, of astringent romance. The essence of the film is a love story that rises from mutual delusion, and that perspective makes this uproarious and antic comedy, in its moral soul, an essential work of intimate realism.