Director: Elaine May
Neither the failure nor the masterpiece that hopeful revisionists have touted it as, Ishtar is the least consistent of director Elaine May’s pictures, which still ranks stretches of it alongside the best comedies of the 1980s. It is a terrific satire of failed masculinity, here expanded into the failure of America’s dealings with the third world—Chuck Clarke (Dustin Hoffman) and Lyle Rogers (Warren Beatty) are so convinced of their genius that they continue to see themselves as masters of their domain even after arriving in Morocco, where they will blunder their way through arms auctions and CIA conspiracies. At the time of its release, critics like Roger Ebert argued that Hoffman and Beatty seemed tortured to be in the film, with Ebert going as far as saying they had, “all wit and thought beaten out of them.” If anything, what makes Ishtar so interesting (and such a failure in moments) is their blind over-eager enthusiasm—Beatty, in particular, seems overjoyed to be playing against type, and Hoffman goes so over-the-top in the auction sequence (the film’s only significant misstep) that one simply can’t argue that he’s sleepwalking. If the bad stretches are definitely bad, the first act of Ishtar is a remarkable feat of American comedy, acting as a short film about the fragile male ego and the birth of a friendship. To top things off, this section is particularly fruitful in demonstrating the brilliance of Clarke & Rogers’ bad songwriting. It is a difficult task to write a bad song where honest intentions can still be assumed, and May and Paul Williams never step too far into the preposterous.
Director: Elaine May
Although a surface-level examination would have one believe that Mikey and Nicky is the outlier of Elaine May’s short directorial career, it actually plays as the most precise of her features, condensing her themes into a modest epic about a failed male friendship. Her previous comedies (A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid) concerned betrayals and humiliation in excruciating detail, and similarly Mikey and Nicky sees John Cassavetes playing a character with the same manic desperation seen from May’s comedic actors in an even grimmer context. May pits Cassavetes against Peter Falk in what largely amounts to a two-hander, and the script and the performances embrace the series of reversals along the way—the picture doesn’t really begin until Falk has had his back pushed against the wall and the power dynamic is challenged. The two men often speak sentimentally about their childhood together, but the purity of what came before seems impossible in the adult context of what it means to establish oneself and make a living. True to the cynicism of many 1970s American features, Mikey and Nicky reflects the cold brutality of a world in which relationships are valued only as highly as the gains one can make from them. What is most remarkable about the film in relation to May’s previous efforts is how similar they are—the final sequence plays out with the same excruciating detail of the most embarrassing moments of The Heartbreak Kid. If much of the comedic context is gone, the desperation of the characters is the same.
Director: Elaine May
Few romantic comedies are as deeply pained as The Heartbreak Kid, which demonstrates the cruelties that result from egotism and the persistent strive for upward mobility. Charles Grodin plays a man who, just days after his wedding night, realizes he is repulsed by his new wife (Jeannie Berlin). Shortly thereafter, a Midwestern knockout (Cybill Shepherd) arrives at the resort where he is beginning his honeymoon and he finds himself instantly smitten. As with director Elaine May’s previous masterpiece A New Leaf, she shows a limitless boundary in showing human behavior at its most repulsive and self-absorbed. Just as May made herself the small-minded clutz of the preceding film, she casts her daughter as a severely sunburned bride with little sense of manners, table or otherwise. And yet, while both of the films revel in the comedic performances of the women, it is the men’s callous treatment of them that is the object of concern. When Grodin leaves Berlin in the hotel room for an entire day and concocts a lie that he has been in a car accident, she questions the authenticity and it results in a childish outburst—even if he knows he’s telling a lie, he is appalled by the fact that his word is being challenged. The Carpenters’ “Close To You” is the oft-repeated theme of the film, and each time it occurs in the soundtrack its message seems to get darker. What originally is sung by two lovers excited about their forthcoming honeymoon eventually dissolves into a demonstration of extraordinary desire and insatiable lust, the rest of the world be damned. Just as Albert Brooks was the most biting filmic satirist of the 1980s, May’s films similarly discuss egotism in an uncommonly raw, immediate way. That the films are hard to watch is not a knock on the entertainment value of the comedy or the actors performing it, but that the ugly themes are uncomfortably relatable.
Director: Elaine May
Elaine May’s directorial debut was reportedly butchered by half of its original running time, which would have reportedly involved blackmail and murder. As it exists now, it is still a hugely satisfying satire, an updating of a screwball comedy in a new, decidedly more cynical context. Walter Mathau plays Henry Graham, a trust fund playboy who has burned through all of his riches. His plan to remedy his problem involves marrying the most hapless upper-class woman he can find and murdering her. Enter the bumbling Henrietta (May), a botanist whose passion for ferns is as admirable as it is uncomely. As much as May pokes fun at her own character’s sexlessness, many of the film’s pleasantries involve the couple’s very awkward connection (even if it is tainted by the deadly intentions!) The hysterical sequence in which Mathau helps May fumble around in a toga nightgown is a wonderfully executed bit of physical comedy, but there is also an intimacy to it that is unmistakable. Mathau’s morose persona is used to its best effect in a role that edges on the side of nihilism–even his usual sardonic charms often drift towards cruelty, as in his (hilarious) berating of the young flower girl at his own wedding. May’s gifts as a director are inextricably linked to her history in improv comedy, and as a result there is a great timing and understatement in the throwaway lines. When Mathau meets a socialite with the surname of Hitler, he asks if the man is related to “the Hitlers of Boston.” While other directors might have shot the moment in close up and taken a pause for audience laughter, May allows it to be delivered (as with many other small lines of its kin) in a long shot and as an aside, encouraging the viewer to listen closely for the humor. Some directors assault the audience with their intention to make them laugh, whereas May merely trusts that they will.
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