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Salesman
Screening: Monday 15 May, 6:30pm
USA
1969
Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
Production co: Maysles Film
Producers: Albert Maysles, David Maysles
Cinematography: Albert Maysles
Editors: David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
Sound: Dick Vorisek
Jamie Baker
Paul Brennan
Melbourne I. Feltman
Raymond Martos
Margaret McCarron
Charles McDevitt
Kennie Turner
85 mins
B & W
DVD (1.33:1)
Exempt
ADMISSION STRICTLY MEMBERS ONLY
If truth is beauty, this 1968 indie doc is harrowingly beautiful, a spiritual kin to Studs Terkel's everyday-people oral histories. The black-and-white film, made by the underheralded Maysles Brothers duo (and their staff of exactly three other people), follows four traveling Bible salesmen from hotel to motel, door to door, as they try to scrape livings out of other people's faith. It's more pathetic than Death of a Salesman: These Boston boys relentlessly repress their economic and spiritual desperation beneath brittle optimism and weary humor, their self-regard pinched narrow as their ties. The film eventually focuses on Paul, an Irish Catholic fellow who's far too bright and miles too deep for this soul-sucking gig. A former whiz kid and Dennis Hopper lookalike, he's lost his knack and can't get it back. As he sinks deeper into mid-life depression, his sales drop to nil, and he begins to quietly implode. The Maysles get incredibly natural "performances" from their subjects: Paul either seems unaware of the camera or he's a natural-born film actor, his grim face saying everything his voice cannot. He didn't do what his family probably expected-that is, "join the farce an' git a pinchun" (as he incants over and over in a sardonic false brogue). Instead, he chose independence, freedom, the open road-and he got the shaft. - Kate Sullivan, City Pages
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