TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Comedy, Satire, Romantic Comedy, Drama, Romance, Black Comedy
Key Collaborators: Rose Arrick (Character Actress), Charles Grodin (Leading Actor), John Carter (Editor), Jack Weston (Leading Character Actor), Paul Sylbert (Production Designer), Doris Roberts (Character Actress)

"With Mike Nichols made up the brilliant satirical cabaret duo in the 50's and early 60's. After splitting up, she went into screen-writing (Such Good Friends 1971) and directing, successfully carrying over much of the scathing wit of their act. A New Leaf (1971) and The Heartbreak Kid (1972) are two of the most cruelly funny American comedies since the 30's. The horrendous females in both movies are played by Elaine May and her daughter (Jeannie Berlin) respectively." - Ronald Bergan (A-Z of Movie Directors, 1983)

"Born into a theater family, May performed with her father in his traveling Yiddish theater company when she was all of three years old. At the University of Chicago in the 1950s, she teamed up with Mike Nichols to form the improvisational duo Nichols and May… Throughout her decades-long career, a through line to her work as an actor, writer, and director is her sense of spontaneity and authenticity, interest in satire, and experimentation with form. May was notorious for filming endless takes of scenes—no doubt in an effort to capture something raw in an actor’s performance." - Susan Oxtoby (BAMPFA, 2022)

"Luckily, there have been several courageous women [directors] in the world… and Elaine May has had probably as turbulent a time in pictures as any of them. Yet she's managed to leave the same distinctive, savagely satirical stamp on four very different films." - Peter Bogdanovich

"My comparison of May with Erich von Stroheim, which may sound frivolous, is actually something I take very seriously. Both filmmakers are mainstream figures with the temperaments of avant-garde artists; Orson Welles’ description of Stroheim’s style as “Jewish baroque” also fits May’s quite well; and perhaps most significantly of all, both of these highly obsessional writer-director-performers create films populated almost exclusively by monsters, yet characters whom their creators clearly love." - Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1997

"Elaine May’s extraordinary career over seven decades as director, screenwriter and stand-up comic remains criminally undervalued… If as a director, May remains something of a cult figure, the two-time Oscar nominated screenwriter is a provocative social satirist to rank alongside Sturges, forever eager to puncture the inflated egos of millionaires, mobsters and politicians and the institutions they hide behind." - Carrie Rickey (Sight & Sound, 2018)

"Four films qualify anyone as a director, and one of those four, Mikey and Nicky, has a vital cult following, while Ishtar is nearly proverbial for disappointment. Me, I think The Heartbreak Kid—about a marriage that sees collapse and a fresh mate during the honeymoon—is the best, as well as the clearest indication of a startling satiric vision. Whereas Mikey and Nicky is a very different kind of film, far less coherent or shapely, but dedicated to a Cassavetes-like untidiness of personality. It’s a remarkable film, full of pain, yet I’m not sure it’s the sort of thing Elaine May was cut out to do." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2010)