A New Leaf
Directed by Elaine May
What’s Up Doc?
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Screening on Film
These two comic gems from the 1970s offer hilarious renderings of mismatched romance. In A New Leaf, Walter Matthau plays a wealthy spendthrift who faces bankruptcy after spending down his trust fund. He plots to marry and murder a rich botanist (May) but love gets in the way. May originally planned a much longer, darker satire before the film was reedited at the behest of producer Robert Evans. Arguably Barbra Streisand’s finest hour, What’s Up Doc? stars the famed songstress as a college drop-out who turns the life of a staid musicologist (O’Neal) upside-down. Director Bogdanovich pulls out all the stops in the film’s hilarious climactic chase through the streets of San Francisco.