A New Leaf / What's Up Doc?

Thursday | July 19, 2007 7:00 pm

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.

PROGRAM

A New Leaf

Directed by Elaine May.
With Walter Matthau, Elaine May, Jack Weston.
US, 1971, 35mm, color, 102 min.
What’s Up Doc?

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
With Ryan O’Neal, Barbra Streisand, Madeline Kahn.
US, 1973, 35mm, color, 94 min.