by Caitlin Hart, Staff Writer

When I showed a friend The Heartbreak Kid this year, I wasn’t sure he liked it much – his laughter was often more of a groan. He yelled at the television in frustration every time the protagonist dug himself a deeper hole. My friend seemed to be in agony rather than in stitches. Such is the experience of enjoying Elaine May’s work.

Fifty years after its release, few filmgoers have seen Elaine May’s 1972 comic masterpiece The Heartbreak Kid. But everyone has encountered the film’s progeny, as its legacy stretches through the last five decades of American cinema, television, and comedy. The comedic voice of the film, written by Neil Simon from Bruce Jay Friedman’s short story, directed by Elaine May and starring Charles Grodin, paved the way for everything from Woody Allen’s romantic comedies to the satirical, cringe-inducing situations of The Office. Thankfully, over the last few years, we’ve entered a May-aissance, and her talents as a writer, director, comedian, and actor are finally being celebrated.

The Heartbreak Kid stars Charles Grodin as Lenny Cantrow, a sports equipment salesman who marries annoying oddball Lila Kolodny (Jeannie Berlin). On their honeymoon in Florida, Lenny meets the beautiful, WASPy Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd) and ends his brief marriage to pursue Kelly, across the resorts of Miami Beach and all the way to Minnesota, where the two eventually marry.

Jewish comedy was already moving to the center of popular culture in the 60s and early 70s, and as New Hollywood took hold, more Jewish comedians, actors, writers, and directors were telling Jewish stories on screen. Actors like Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Richard Dreyfuss, and Elliot Gould, among countless others, were part of a new generation of Hollywood actors “proclaiming, rather than hiding their Jewishness” (Brook 2019, 48), and Charles Grodin was part of that wave. But it’s directors like Elaine May, her former comedy partner Mike Nichols, as well as writer-directors like Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen, who made the sharp, witty brand of New York Jewish comedy the dominant mode for the rest of the 20th century.

Like most comedies of the era, The Heartbreak Kid is grounded in a kind of psychological realism, and concerned with understanding the self and society through relationships – a more intellectual, post-psychoanalysis boom than the screwball comedies that dominated earlier decades. The film focuses on the relationships between Jewish men and non-Jewish women, a theme that will emerge again and again in popular comedy, from the beautiful shiksas of Woody Allen’s films to Jerry’s countless girlfriends on Seinfeld. While works like Seinfeld and Manhattan concern themselves with work and family, none of it is nearly as important as romantic and sexual relationships. So too in The Heartbreak Kid – the animating force in Lenny’s life is not ambition, wealth, or family, but the pursuit of meaning through love and sex. In the end, however, Lenny is left adrift by his pursuit, the film’s comedic conclusion tinged with harsh reality. This emptiness, the utter defeat, makes The Heartbreak Kid more of an anti-romcom. Like Annie Hall, it resists the happy endings so commonly associated with the genre. And like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Veep, just to name a few, The Heartbreak Kid never lets Lenny win. Even when you get what you want, well, it’s not what you want anymore. Winning is never as fun as trying to win.

Grodin plays all of this expertly, a proto-George Costanza who tells increasingly elaborate lies with ease, blustering and fumbling his way through life. His comedic timing, unexpected line readings, and frenetic presence herald a new kind of comedy star – one who is both deeply neurotic and incredibly physical. His is a comedy that is both totally embodied, and yet entirely informed by the psychological realism he brings to the role. For a character to be both comically large, and yet grounded in the real rhythms of a full person, takes incredible skill. It’s no exaggeration to say Grodin is a comedic genius – and he’s hardly received the credit he’s due.

Neil Simon was massively successful in the 60s and 70s, his work dominating the stage, as well as film and television. But watch almost any other Simon joint today and it feels stale and safe. The Heartbreak Kid is the one exception – due in large part to May’s comedic vision as a director. While comedies can rely on ratatat dialogue or funny scenarios, May resists easy laughs. Her use of the camera, twisting, zooming out, and holding back at different moments, finds the comedy in space and silence as much as in action and dialogue. The mockumentary style that became so popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s, where the camera becomes a comedic voice itself, echoes May’s genius. Sitting in silence with Lenny and Lila, letting scenes drag on in agonizing discomfort, is another technique familiar to anyone who watches The Office or Curb – there’s a slower pace to this style of comedy that May brought to the big screen. The film “doesn't constantly bow to Neil Simon's script” (Ebert 1972), instead incorporating May’s experience as an improviser to find the funny in every scene.

At every turn in The Heartbreak Kid, Lenny makes the wrong choice, a series of ego-driven fumbles that would suit an episode of Curb. As the film tracks Lenny to Minnesota, he becomes a stranger in a strange land – the coastal interloper on the wholesome American family. Annie Hall treads similar territory 5 years later – and countless other Jewish comedies rely on this friction. This is also the tension between Seinfeld’s central characters and the broader world, pushed to an even greater extreme in Curb. These are characters who are, as Alvy’s mother says in Annie Hall, “always out of step with the world.” The dissonance is both the source of comedy, and the defining feature of these characters. Rather than being a type of everyman, Charles Grodin, Woody Allen, and Larry David, among others, represent comedic impulses which are detached, separate from the broader world, lead by a different moral code. Lenny’s questionable code of ethics is echoed in both Seinfeld and Curb: a character who is “other” constantly violating social norms and coming across as antisocial in their ego drive to get what they want and not live life on anyone’s terms but their own. Characters act solely to avoid their own pain (and the pain of others) and experience pleasure, which they never can. May’s work always has an intimate understanding of the deep and complex psychology that drives her characters. Key to that psychology is creating discomfort, a comic mode that is more popular than ever – series like Veep and 30 Rock create uncomfortable scenarios, and then exacerbate them for the audience with silence, leaning into the awkwardness.

May’s specific rhythms and sensibilities have continued to influence comedy today. While the era of the studio comedy is over, syndication and streaming have made The Office and Seinfeld perennial favorites, even for those too young to have watched those series on the first go around. And while the 21st century brought a decidedly sillier and less incisive voice to comedy, everything from Veep to Nathan Fielder maintains the spirit of Elaine May’s comedy – both deeply human and yet decidedly alien; unyielding in its blackness; and sharply aimed in its satire.

References

Brook, Vincent. 2019. “A Wave of their Own: How Jewish Filmmakers Invented the New Hollywood.” Jewish Film & New Media: An International Journal 7, no. 1 (Spring): 48-80. Muse.
Ebert, Roger. 1972. “The Heartbreak Kid.” Chicago Sun Times, December 17, 1972, 1. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-heartbreak-kid-1972.