I was drawn back to The Heartbreak Kid — I’m talking about the original movie, directed by Elaine May -- with Charles Grodin, Eddie Albert, and starring the amazing Jeannie Berlin. I recently saw Jeannie Berlin in Woody Allen’s film Cafe Society on Prime. Cafe Society is a lovely movie, it brought tears to my eyes, if only because it was so beautifully crafted. No one watches Woody Allen movies anymore, except they do. Whatever his personal transgressions he will continue to make great movies. Jeannie Berlin, old now, plays a mother in Cafe Society. This made me think of the original 'Heartbreak Kid 'which is a kind of masterpiece. (I am not referring not to the 2007 film with Malina Akerman and Ben Stiller, which is entertaining enough.) I had been watching the new 'Heartbreak Kid' for years, but I hadn’t recently viewed the old one; and the difference between the two says a lot about where we are now. The Heartbreak Kid is based on a story by playwright Bruce Jay Friedman; the screenplay is by Neil Simon. Interestingly, the original film was created by a flock of Jews, but paradoxically, I have no doubt it would nowadays be considered anti-Semitic. Charles Grodin -- who is too cute and too fabulous for words (what happened to him?) plays a young handsome Jew who marries Jeannie Berlin — who at first seems an attractive enough Jewish princess. Much is made of the Jewish wedding ceremony, and Jeannie Berlin’s Lyla is a largish, dark-haired and loud -- a somewhat silly, vulgar girl. However, she is nice enough. But Grodin becomes disenchanted with her; on their honeymoon he falls in love with Cybil Shepherd, a beautiful blonde from Minnesota vacationing with her family. Viewed through a politically correct lens the film seems somewhat offensive. The Jewish girl is ridiculed and summarily supplanted by the whitest most Christian girl ever imagined. In the 2007 remake this element is unceremoniously jettisoned — because of course these days nothing can be too political or controversial in mass culture. So Malina Akerman — who is whiter than white — plays Ben Stiller’s first wife, and thus now he is not choosing Christian over Jew. We loose, of course, the gentle and observant satire of Jewish culture -- which was at the heart of Elaine May's vision. But this is not all that’s lost. First of all, the film is just about love and infatuation -- and the thin line that separates the two. Also it is a critique of 60s sexual mores. When Grodin and Berlin are necking before they are married, she pushes his hand away, and says something to the effect of -- ‘let’s save that for marriage.’ They do, with the result that all bets are placed on their wedding night, which is inevitably disappointing for Charles Grodin -- especially when Berlin constantly asks him ‘is it wonderful?’ — until he finally bursts out with “Yes it’s wonderful I’ve said it’s wonderful 10 times!” (Or something to that effect.) Thus the original 1972 film is a subtle endorsement of ‘free love.’ (If the two had had sex before marriage, all this might not have happened.) There are two scenes of comic genius — one when Jeannie Berlin is doing nothing more amazing than eating an egg salad sandwich. I have always found egg salad sandwiches disgusting — I remember my father always made them for me when I visited him towards the end of his life -- not sure why -- no matter how much I told him I hated them -- and it is the one food that can actually, for me, instigate nausea, at the mere mention of it. At any rate Jeannie is eating her sandwich and gets a mouthful of egg in closeup, and Grodin gently says something like ‘Honey, you’ve got some egg there….a little egg on your mouth’ which Belin does not succeed in wiping off, and which he ignores because, well, he’s trying to be nice. Berlin literally has egg on her face, and all you can think of is -- is Grodin married to that? To make matters worse, Berlin keeps saying things like ‘Do you realize we’re going to be married for 50 years’ over and over, which obviously strikes terror in the heart of Grodin, and why wouldn’t it? The reason this movie was so initially traumatic for me (I can barely watch the beginning of it -- it upsets me that much -- and that’s the way good comedy should be) is because I was a closeted homosexual with a girlfriend -- who I was set to marry -- when I first watched it. There is no film quite as claustrophobic and earth shatteringly honest about marriage as this one. In The Heartbreak Kid, it is Cybil Sheppard, a smooth blonde gentile girl -- who sends Grodin into paroxysms of ecstasy and compels him to leave his egg-faced wife, whereas I left a lovely young lady for a smooth, curly-haired young man. The second moment of classic comedy comes when Eddie Albert— terrifying as Cybil Sheppard’s pontificating father -- catches on to Grodin’s unctuous hypocrisy. Trying to flatter Sheppard’s parents about their wholesome Minnesota meal, Grodin says, hilariously: “There is no deceit in that cauliflower.” (I don't know if it was Simon or Friedman who wrote that brilliant line!) Grodin, by the end of the film, has married the love of his life, but lost his soul. For he is now wedded not only corruption, but genocide. One of the men at the Cybil Shepherd wedding party says to him ‘There’s a lot of money in tear gas.' Behind this is playing the famous Coca-Cola theme song (‘I’d like to give the world a coke’). Of course all of this is gone from the 1972 version. That’s because we live in a corrupt world, in which genocide is accepted — we’re quite happy to talk about the genocide that happened in the past, but when it comes to thinking a little bit about the oppressed people who make our apple computers, iphones, and stitch together our ten dollar jeans in foreign lands, well -- modern films are largely silent. Nowadays Woody Allen is banished from our thoughts, because of something horrible that he may have done in his personal life; that he may have done this horrible thing I am not disputing (I can’t wait for the new HIBO documentary about the scandal — it’s coming up!). But I am a great believer in the depravity of artists. I am sure Elaine May was quite depraved, as was Mike Nichols (you can see May still, very old, but still funny, in Woody Allen’s series on Prime Crisis in Six Scenes). Artists once wrote from the position of ‘we are all depraved so let's take a good look at that depravity’ now they write from 'I am a good person I will teach you how to stop being bad.' It’s all less redeeming, ultimately, and much more yawnable, I’m afraid.