Albert and David Maysles, Grey Gardens (1975)

Little Edie (Edith Bouvier Beale) and Albert Maysles
(still from Grey Gardens, 1975)
no copyright infringement intended

Grey Gardens, the 1975 documentary of the Maysles Brothers, tells the story of two women, mother and daughter. Big Edie and Little Edie. Two very kind persons deeply in decay, totally out of touch with the life running around.

The mother, Big Edie, in her eighties. Long time ago a well-known presence in the NY high society: a rich socialite with a lifestyle often eccentric while definitely good taste, an amateur singer organizing unforgettable parties at her mansion in East Hampton. That mansion was a great place to be, with a huge garden surrounding it on the ocean shore. The estate was known as The Grey Gardens (a name sounding perhaps weird; looking for an explanation I found in wikipedia that it was due to the special appearance put together by the garden walls, shore dunes, and ocean mist - and wikipedia was quoting in turn a post from 2013: A Return to Grey Gardens).

Meanwhile the estate got completely rundown. Like Big Edie, incapable any more of taking care of herself, almost bedridden, at the end of the road. Fully aware, therefore adding a touch of bitterness to her natural kindness.

The daughter, Little Edie, in her late fifties. At around twenty she had tried to enter the world of NY fashion and/or entertainment, whatever, without success. She was too kind, or too naive, too much a dreamer, too childish perhaps. At around thirty her life was already a failure. She came to live together with her mother (who was by then in her early sixties). To take care of the old lady? Rather to be taken care by? Anyway both went on in decaying. Together with the once famous mansion of fourteen rooms or so, now in shambles. No running water, garbage all over the place, holes in the walls, cats and raccoons on the loose, here and there beautiful portraits of them as young ladies, surrounded by cat feces and by mountains of old papers and magazines.

The two were closely related to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: Big Edie was the aunt of the First Lady. Albert and David Maysles had originally intended to make a documentary about the sister of Jacqueline, Lee Radziwill, who told them about the Edie's. The two cinéastes paid a visit to The Grey Gardens and what they saw there made them change the subject of their movie. They got the accept of the two ladies, moved there with their camera and began shooting. And soon the camera and the filming team became part of the odd world of Grey Gardens, surrounded, challenged,  and risking to be swallowed.

Watching this movie is tough. You feel the same challenge the camera did, the risk to be swallowed. However, there is something beyond the nude reality. Something ineffable. Name it holiness. Or better, name it humanity: everything there in the Grey Gardens is depressing, but it is so deeply human, that it touches the chords of the Universe. Two human beings failed, it's not only the story of the aunt and cousin of the First Lady of the United States. It is often the story next door, it is often our own story: old age, sickness, lost dreams, failure to keep up to the challenges of the present, and you still remain a human being. You can loose everything, your health, your fortune, the esteem of the others, you still keep the intrinsic beauty of a human being. And this makes Grey Gardens a masterpiece.

Grey Gardens, 1975
(video by Kristin Dowell)

(Albert and David Maysles)

Salesman (1968)

David and Albert Maysles during the filming of Salesman
(Forbes, credit Associated Press)
no copyright infringement intended

An almost hallucinatory piece of cinéma vérité that needs a second watch to get its message and everything. And that is because Salesman is subtly but unbearably depressing. A quiet desperation is pervasive throughout the movie, almost at a subliminal level. A group of four door to door salesmen is followed in their daily business. A business implying a network of bosses, salesmen, prospects. A network where nobody's innocent: the prospects struggle to find reasons to reject the offer, the salesmen push relentlessly to perfect the sales, the bosses press the salesmen to get results. And all this takes place in the Catholic universe: they try to sell expensive Catholic editions of the Bible to lower income families of Catholic parishioners. Spirituality and business interlaced, or rather business pushing aside spirituality. Under the spiritual skin a Darwinian struggle, where the weak ones are eliminated: aging parishioners cannot find any more the energy to reject the offers, aging salesmen cannot find the energy to place their Bibles any more. One of the salesmen, the eldest of them, is on the brink of loosing the battle: for those who fail the American Dream shows its nightmarish truth.

Paradoxically this depressing movie carries also something like a charm: a time capsule bringing the today's viewer back to a bygone era, the wonderful 1960's, when we were so young, ladies were wearing their curlers with genuineness and gentlemen were playing cards with open pleasure, sales were made door to door, the Internet wasn't yet born, you talked with your sweetie via a phone operator, people were not afraid to invite strangers inside the house, faith was still a thing people cared about, the convertibles were so big and Gosh, so vintage! And everybody smoked, everybody, all the time! You can guess I watched it twice.

Salesman, 1968
produced by Albert and David Maysles
based on an idea by David Maysles
directed by Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
cinematographed by Albert Maysles
edited by David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
(video by Classic Documentary Channel)

(Albert and David Maysles)

Albert Maysles, Russian Close-up (1957)

Albert and David Maysles in Red Square, 1957
(Cine Archive)
no copyright infringement intended

When Jean-Luc Godard calls you ‘the best American cameraman,’ as he did of Albert Maysles, you know you’re onto something

(Cine Archive)

In 1957 Albert Maysles came back to Russia, this time together with his brother David, and they crossed the country on a scooter. The result was a 33 minute, 16 mm black and white, documentary, Russian Close-up. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a copy to put it here. Another movie (made much later by Walter Salles) comes to my mind: Diarios de Motocicleta. I think it's a different beast. The movie of Sales has a political dimension, inevitably, you cannot talk about Che without taking sides one way or another, while the moto-diary of the Maysles brothers for sure is just Cinéma vérité. The way the world is seen by a man with the talent for getting on well with people.

poster of Russian Close-up
(The Telegraph)
no copyright infringement intended

The Maysles brothers were among the first documentarians to use cameras small and light enough to fit on a cameraman’s shoulder, and in their work you can see the intimate view of personal experience that this allowed them to capture. At the time, they called it ‘direct cinema’; today we think of it as ‘Cinéma vérité.’ Such a humanistic focus would understandably disdain the importance of soulless institutions and the ‘official’ view of the world, and indeed, this ethic would gain far more traction in the late 1960s and beyond.

(Cine Archive)

still from Russian Close-up
(Film-Cine)
no copyright infringement intended

(Albert and David Maysles)

Albert Maysles, Psychiatry in Russia (1955)

surrounded by ladies
Albert Maysles during the shooting
(Dangerous Minds)
no copyright infringement intended

A nice photo made in 1955, during the shooting of Psychiatry in Russia. For all his life Albert Maysles enjoyed enormously to be surrounded by ladies, as many as it could be. He was a very nice person who always generated genuine sympathy. That was the way I met him sometime in the 2000s, a joyful octogenarian flooded by feminine presence, young documentarians from New York surrounding their beloved patriarch. In the photo above, shot in 1955 in Moscow, a young Albert Maysles appears in the middle of a bouquet of Soviet ladies, doctors, patients, medical staff.

It was his first movie. Albert Maysles was twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He had an MA in psychology from Boston University where he was teaching. Sometime by 1954 he made a professional trip in the Soviet Union, to visit psychiatry institutions there and set scientific contacts. The following year he came back with a handheld camera, starting a long cinematic career.

Psychiatry in Russia is a thirteen minute documentary. Albert Maysles is the orchestra-man: director, cameraman, editor, narrator. The camera follows the eyes of the filmmaker and borrows his genuineness and empathy. It's a window of freshness, in a Cold War era dominated by deep mistrust and hysterical propaganda. An American in Russia, and the lack of arrogance is total! No patronizing, nothing of the kind. Just a human being among other human beings.The camera is just following people, doctors and medical assistants and patients, normal people with normal wishes. Ironically, the psychiatric environment makes the demonstration of normalcy. A statue of the Generalissimo seen in the background for just a second, as a touch of chiaroscuro: normalcy was having its limits, like always.

Psychiatry in Russia, 1955
(video by sonoftrev)

(Albert and David Maysles)

Albert and David Maysles

Albert (holding a camera), and David Maysles
photo shot in their studio, 1968
(John Sotomayor/The New York Times)
no copyright infringement intended

I had the privilege to meet once Albert Maysles. It was a party in his apartment in Chelsea, the large living room had become an incredibly tiny spot, crowded as it was  with young filmmakers, surrounding the old man with noisy joy. The air was hard to breath, imbued as it was with a formidable feeling of sympathy. Albert was a great documentarian, a seminal figure in the NY school of documentary. He was also a very nice man, very open, with a superb sense of empathy, and a genuine attitude in everything.

Albert Maysles in a recent photo
(Facebook)
no copyright infringement intended

Albert Maysles passed away two days ago. An obituary was published in NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/movies/albert-maysles-pioneering-documentarian-dies-at-88.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

• Psychiatry in Russia, 1955
• Russian Close-up, 1957
• Salesman, 1968
• Grey Gardens, 1975

(Filmofilia)