For our next film screening on Thursday 12th February we’re getting in the Valentine’s mood with a suitably cynical 70s take on the screwball/romantic comedy, A New Leaf from 1971. This is the directorial debut of one of cinema’s greatest comedic geniuses, Elaine May, who here displays her triple threat brilliance as writer, director and star.
In a perfect comic pairing, Walter Matthau also stars as egocentric playboy Henry Graham, who manages to squander his entire inheritance and, so repulsed by the idea of working for a living, must quickly find a wealthy heiress to charm, wed and murder to keep his luxury lifestyle intact. He sets his sights on the shy, clumsy botanist Henrietta Lowell (May), who, in her guilelessness and total preoccupation with new species of fern, makes the perfect target.
A New Leaf was released during a cinematic period dubbed the New Hollywood, which was a wave of trailblazing American filmmaking beginning in the late 1960s, where artistic authorship was passed from the studio to the director. Uniquely, May brought comedy to the New Hollywood’s typically dark themes and unsympathetic antiheroes. May is the only mainstream female filmmaker to emerge from this movement, and her mark on it is enormous and undervalued, beginning long before A New Leaf hit screens and continuing long after. She frequently collaborated with Mike Nichols, marked by her brief appearance in The Graduate (1967), played script doctor to Warren Beatty and Sydney Pollack and would later direct John Cassavetes in her film Mikey and Nicky (1976). In usual May style, A New Leaf is acidic in its skewering of marriage, wealth and male hubris, but is infused with such charm and empathy that, despite the gold digging and poisoning plots, the end product is somehow still perversely romantic.
Doors from 6pm, film starts at 7pm. Tickets are £6 and as always, include a free drink on arrival. Grab yours here.
This project is supported by Film Hub North with National Lottery funding on behalf of the BFI Film Audience Network.