Elaine May: Age of Irony

September 9–30, 2022

Highly regarded as a comedian, screenwriter, playwright, and actress, Elaine May had a more tempestuous ride as a film director—often at odds with the Hollywood studio executives. Her films are championed by many for their ironic humor, sense of spontaneity, authenticity, and experimentation with form.

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  • The Heartbreak Kid

  • Mikey and Nicky

  • A New Leaf

  • Ishtar

  • Heaven Can Wait

  • Upcoming
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  • Upcoming
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  • Selected
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  • Past
    Films
  • Past
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Past Films

  • Ishtar

    • Friday, September 30 7 PM
    Elaine May
    United States, 1987

    Digital Restoration
    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    Broke, untalented nightclub performers (Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman) accept a gig at a Moroccan hotel before becoming CIA pawns in May’s highly underrated romp. “May’s screenwriting has a sardonic, aphoristic brilliance. . . . [as director] she pushes Beatty and Hoffman out of their familiar personae, into strange psychodramatic performances that emerge with a precision of gesture and inflection” (Richard Brody, New Yorker).

  • The Heartbreak Kid

    • Sunday, September 25 7 PM
    Elaine May
    United States, 1972

    The Heartbreak Kid is a bitter satire that plays like a whimsical romantic comedy. “[A] movie that manages the marvelous and very peculiar trick of blending the mechanisms and the cruelties of Neil Simon’s comedy with the sense and sensibility of F. Scott Fitzgerald” (Vincent Canby, New York Times).

  • Mikey and Nicky

    • Friday, September 9 7 PM
    • Saturday, September 17 7 PM
    Elaine May
    United States, 1976

    Digital Restoration

    Excellent performances by Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, who play petty gangsters in a lonely night’s landscape, on the run from death, mark this distinctive work, written and directed by May.

  • Heaven Can Wait

    • Friday, September 16 7 PM
    Warren Beatty, Buck Henry
    United States, 1978

    This fantasy-comedy about a young man (Beatty) who is mistakenly taken to heaven by his guardian angel earned May her first Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

  • A New Leaf

    • Sunday, September 11 5 PM
    Elaine May
    United States, 1971

    Starring Walter Matthau as a playboy who has squandered his wealth and must marry a rich woman or forfeit all his passions, and May as a nerdy heiress, A New Leaf “illustrates how fluidly May fuses verbal and physical comedy” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).