Salesman – Criterion Collection
Product DescriptionDocuments the lives of four Bible salesmen, their attempts at success, and their journeys through America’s living rooms. Genre: DocumentaryRating: NRRelease Date: 4-SEP-2001Media Type: DVDAmazon. comArguably the best American documentary of the 1960s, Salesman was the pivotal film of the “direct cinema” movement championed by such influential filmmakers as Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, and (in this case) the . . . More >>
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A masterpiece of the direct-cinema, the real life of an american bible salesman, brought to us by the Maysles brothers.
Rating: 5 / 5
Yessir folks, a fine show, rush out and get your dickbeaters on this’n. For four easy payments of $8. 99 this dvd can be added to your collection, via the Amazon credit card. I am seriously considering dropping the loot for it tho, I readily admit. The thing sells itself you know.
I was thoroughly amused by the plight of these four hapless gents, peddlin’ Bibles looked like it had to have been the bombiggity back then!
The joyful glee these beasts portray as they play their desperate, scheming games, is poetic beauty in its’ stark contrast to the ideals admonished within the pages of their merchandise.
There’s “The Gipper” who’s slicker’n snot on a doorknob. “The Bull” is ruthless, and you can probably guess about Jimmy “The Rabbit” Baker. Although, they mighta named him “The Rat”, or “The Weasel”, just as well, given his features, mannerisms, and slight speech impediment.
Then there’s our hero, Paul “The Badger” Brennan, the most desperate, a clearly stressed beast, gone stark raving mad. Cracking under the enormous spiritual torture predicated by life as a salesman. His frail, twisted psyche is complete with a vocal disdain for the “guineas” and “micks” he solicits. The demons rattling in his soul are given voice through various self-addressed diatribes, countless piss’n'moan sessions with his fellow salesmen, and the absent-minded humming of an old Irish hymn or the “I wish I was a rich man” refrain from “The Fiddler on the Roof”. The Badger pursues the daily grind of his profession with the same tortured despair of an old scabby heroin-addict peddling his flesh for one last fix, in the red-light district.
We are witness to a few priceless pep talks during team meetings and business award ceremonies, the salesmen are no doubt required to attend, meant to bolster up their spirits and fire up their zeal for the job.
The Head Honcho is a savage and driven beast, thick of neck and skull, a cro-magnon with a penchant for poker and gin rummy, who is consumed with the desire to meet out heavy-handed discipline on the malcontents among them.
“I want to go on record, and I want to tell you all, the next man who get’s off base with me, I’m gonna tag him out. The ball game’s over. ” he tells the boys, who cheer him wildly, in dedicated fear.
One speaker tells them with righteous conviction, “There are many people who know the Bible. There are many people who can quote from the Bible. But you are different. You know the business. ” He goes on to equate “Bible-peddling” to “The Father’s Business”.
Lost souls selling the message FOR lost souls.
There was the standard reserved jubilation in personal success and the failures of others which you are apt to see in the competitive sales game.
“How’d you like the sales meeting, yes men?” asks the Head Honcho of his subserviants. “Tahmarrow Fluriduh boys. ”
Too-ah-loo-ah-loo-ah-loo it’s off to do some sightseeing with the Badger. A salesman with a hard-on for the job, a beautiful beast indeed. Getting lost in Little Iraq. Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves, Aesop’s Fables and other deranged analogies.
“Boy, you eat like you’re successful. ” I laughed ’til I sh** at the scene where the Head Honcho breaks the Bull’s brass balls the next morning at breakfast. Just as the Bull is ramming a whopping bite of breaky down his throat, the Honch whallops him on the back, thee ol’ “Atta boy!” manuever, which in this context meant, “Who’s the bit** now?” Apparently no love lost there.
“99% perspiration. . . ” Working poor folks over with coniving desperation. Make that about 110% it appears, Badger. 58 alternative rhetorics to combat the grim excuses caused by poverty. The “Don’t have a pot ta poo in, or a winda’ ta throw it through, how’s I’m gonna buy yer fancy Cath’lic bible, mister?” type of cop-outs.
Smelling blood in the water, the Badger romances a homeland girl, flirtacious handshakes prickling the ire of her husband. “He g’wonna wear that hand out. . . ” hhhahhuhha A thinly veiled threat to any man who would cross the line with his Betty. A sale made and something about how the Bible’s been blessed, “. . . ‘cuz if it’s not blessed you won’t be gettin’ the full benefits out of it. ” the Badger lays the Cath’lic smack down on his way out.
The Badger; chuckling goon, purveyor of doom, litterer of flat tires, homesick, ruthless talking monkey.
Probably the most disturbing scene is the one where the Badger hustles a poor, nit-witted housewife for her last few shekels. A true-blue whoring shill, a poster-beast for the genre.
The soul-wrenching agony of a ruptured sale. “Much easier sellin’ to mick Cath’lics. ”
A driven salesman will talk over his marks, cut them off mid-sentence, humiliate them in their own homes. Perhaps more subtle in approach, the cycle continues today. The poor are still targeted and victimized through their own ignorance and the greedy designs of evil beasts.
The Badger’s roadside rant to the Rabbit, “I might as well be shootin’ myself in the sun. ” Amen.
Kept on the dangle. Pressure pulling both ways.
A skinny man in open rebellion against his “hooked-on-religion” wife, puts on a phonograph record containing a freakish, classical rendition of the Beatles “Yesterday”, turning up the volume in an effort to drown out the unholy desacration happening on his couch. The Bull is closing the deal on this poor bastard’s wife. “F*** the bit**!” screams the thin man, on the inside, grinning deviously over a smoldering cigarette.
Returning to their lair that night, clearly rattled, one can sense that the Bull wants Paul to shut his whimpering hole, he is dragging him down.
Paul needs a spark.
The Gipper takes him along on the next mission. “Sometimes it isn’t a spark you need, it’s an explosion. ” more desperate chuckling.
“That’s Life. ”
“Join tha Fahss an gitta pinchion. ” Paul saws on the collective’s last thread of unity and sanity.
Big ups to Albert and David Maysles, who give us this rich glimpse of Americana, long forgotten, but the spirit of which, still drives the Beast and its’ Machine.
Rating: 5 / 5
Easily one of the most powerful and effective documentaries ever made, this film follows (fly on the wall style) three Bible salesmen in their efforts to fulfill the American dream. Anyone, it is said, can make it big, if they just work hard and work smart. Some can. But there are others who, through no fault of their own, just can’t do it. This film is primarily a portrait of a man who is a hard worker, who is passionate about what he is selling, and nevertheless can’t seem to make it happen for himself. It is heartbreaking to watch him, even on the days he has a few sales and is riding high, because you know it won’t last.
It can’t last because the main character is unable and unwilling to pull out all the stops. It becomes clear that in order to succeed in sales — and I know this from personal experience as an occasional salesman for various goods throughout college — you have to pull out all the stops. You can’t let a sale go. Even when it becomes clear that the client cannot afford and doesn’t really need the product you are selling — and what is so heartbreaking in this film are the moments when the lead pushes his product even on such persons, knowingly, but in such despair about his own inability to sell the product that he has lost the conscience that on other occasions lets him know when to stop.
A remarkable film. Highly recommended.
Rating: 5 / 5
This innovative, powerful film shines sobering light on the modern human condition. We witness a man who sees his way of life receding before his very eyes, leaving him with precious little to show for it. The sad, wrenching tale still delivers potent, thought-provoking impact.
Rating: 5 / 5
I love this movie. First it is a time capsule that really takes me back to when I was a kid in the late 60′s. Secondly, I sold insurance door to door for a year and worked other sales jobs and this movie is dead on. The character study is fantastic and I just enjoyed every minute of it. It holds up to any fictional movie. Great stuff.
Rating: 5 / 5