I laugh just thinking about Elaine May's "A New Leaf" (1971), starring Walter Matthau as aging upper-cruster Henry Graham who, having frittered away his inheritance, schemes to woo, marry and then murder enormously rich heiress Henrietta Lowell, played by May. But please don't think me ghoulish when I inform that this is one of my very favorite romantic comedies. Nor should you furrow a brow when I further relate that in Henry Graham I see my inner foppishness, sans any inclination toward treachery, of course. So no need to alert the authorities.

 

"I was so happy," bleats Henry to his loyal manservant, Harold, sublimely portrayed by Britisher George Rose in one of those performances that used to get overlooked by the Academy because it was in a comedy. Worried for his own position, apprising that his employer aspires to a patrician lifestyle that was dead long before he was born, Harold suggests, "Oh, take the plunge, sir … find a suitable woman and marry." 

 

And ruining it for you just a bit, but what the heck, one of my favorite, sociologically perceptive lines comes from Harold when trying to convince his employer that without marriage he'll be poor.

 

"Poor?" asks Henry.

 

"Yes," says Harold, "Poor in the only real sense of the word sir, in that you will not be rich. You will have a little after you've sold everything, but in a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much. There is no such thing as genteel poverty here, sir."

 

Be assured, Harold isn't suggesting the bumping off part. That's solely Henry's idea, and we never for a moment think he'll really go through with it, until, well, we get a bit worried, especially after we meet the delightfully disheveled Henrietta. A botany professor who, Minnie Pearl style, walks about with tags still attached to her clothing, smudged eyeglasses askew, she resides on one of those castle-like estates that makes you wonder, "Who lives there?" And par for the course, we learn the lovingly eggheaded scientist is being blatantly exploited by her gaggle of servants masterminded by chief bloodsucker, Mrs. Traggert, portrayed by Doris Roberts in one of the film's several, whimsical, supporting performances.

 

The thing that happens here, as it does with any film you consider among your very favorites, is that in the magical whirligig of imagination that is cinema, you presume friendship with the protagonists. You like them … maybe even love them, and it has yet to be disproven outside of the most esoteric, philosophical conjecture, that they don't feel exactly the same way about you.

 

In the intimacy one feels with a movie that speaks to your soul, to your aspirations and your value system, the accordance and understanding that you welcome into your heart is merely a variation on the same epiphany experienced when you discovered a certain author's simpatico.

 

Y'know, "Gee, I'm not alone … that's how I feel."

 

That Henry has among his prized possessions a certain model Ferrari I came to know in a tangential relationship with a Brahmin kid at college plays a small but nostalgic role in my feeling for the self-centered dandy. But there's more to it. When, after expending his fortune he excursions in the red, '67, 275 GTB for a last glimpse of his favorite places — a chichi restaurant, his haberdasher, the men's club — whimpering, "I'm poor, I'm poor," it's a testament to your big-heartedness that you feel sorry for the cad.

 

Truth be told, though he's the sort your mother would prefer you didn't play with, he's a good hang, and because you just might see a bit of yourself in Henry Graham, the magnanimity that causes you to believe he's capable of reformation is cozily subjective. For gosh sakes, gallows humor component notwithstanding, Henrietta Lowell's very life depends on that idealism.

 

You see, you'd have to be a real misanthrope not to love this sweet, innocent and untidy, latter-day Dulcinea, who doesn't for a second suspect the slightest deceit from her Don Quixote of a courtier who says he's read her monographs in the botanical journals. I mean, how can you not feel compassion following the repartee that ensues when Harold expresses happiness that Henry has found a "suitable" woman. 

 

"She is NOT suitable. She's primitive, she has no spirit, no wit, no conversation, and she has to be vacuumed every time she eats," retorts Henry.

 

"Oh, she must be very wealthy sir ..." Harold approvingly surmises.

 

All of which brings us to one of the very essences of why we love movies. While it is extremely rare in real life for that annoying harridan or that overbearing lout to change their stripes, in the dark of the theater, where hope springs eternal, it is always possible that one can turn over "A New Leaf."

 

"A New Leaf," rated G, is a Paramount Pictures release directed by Elaine May and stars Walter Matthau, Elaine May and George Rose. Running time: 102 minutes