User reviews

Salesman(1969) Quite possibly the best documentary ever made. The Maysles' Brothers( Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens) mesmerizing story follows four bible salesmen pounding the turf selling over priced bibles to poor catholics and the tactics that they use to pull off these sales.One salesman in particular, Paul "the Badger' Brennan is the central character of the documentary and it is heart wrenching to watch his decline from a once successful salesman to an also-ran whose heart and soul just aren't into it anymore. One unforgettable scene has another salesman humiliating Brennan in front of a customer. This documentary is a real slice of Americana and a film worth watching time and time again.

This interesting documentary is like a time capsule. Bringing to life the late 1960's, in a sometimes unsettling manner. It tells the story of a group of door to door Irish/American salesmen, selling Bibles in Boston and Florida. It is fascinating to watch the actual sales pitch, the manners and way we were at that time. (Smoking was certainly the order of the day) The growing desperation of one of the older salesmen as his sales figures slump, is quite as moving as in the play "Death of a Salesman". Anyone who has ever been involved is selling direct to the public should make this compulsive viewing. The documentary technique is also exceptional. There is not a word of commentary, introduction, or the usual "talking head" interviews that slow so many of todays TV documentaries. The characters themselves, and clever editing clearly tell the story and create the a raw drama. Camera work is remarkable for the time too, the subjects never seem to be aware of the filming process, unlike much Reality TV. This is a true American Tragedy, reflecting the loneliness of old time salesmen, and indeed that of many people with whom they deal. It is a credit to the Maysles.

I have a stomach for tough, realistic movies. I didn't flinch while watching the "Bad Lieutenant." But I had to turn this one off for a little while.

It's too real. It's painfully unromantic but often poignant. It's an absolutely amazing piece of filming.

This documentary about Salesmen is simply awesome. Set in the 1960's, this film brings to life the reality of four Bible Salesmen. We have Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Raymond "The Bull" Martos, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt and James "The Rabbit" Baker. These drummers pitch the reverence, serenity and beauty of their gaudily illustrated and over- priced goods, but there is no peace for the figidity, knuckle-gnawing, chain-smoking and desperate men in this documentary, especially for "The Badger". Failure, fear and despair was written all over his face as he has lost his touch, mostly because of his own soured attitude, and there will be no stopping this decline because he just cannot close any more.

The sales targets, as you might guess, are people who can afford it the least, poor Catholic families in middle to lower middle class neighborhoods. "We're from the Church" is the first lie that comes out of their mouths as these hucksters use Jesus and guilt to try to separate money from those who cannot afford, and do not need yet another Bible. After a gut-wrenching and intimidating Sales Meeting, they move their dog and pony show from snowy Massachusetts to Florida, but nothing really changes for the desperate salesmen.

I mean, why mince words, these guys are creeps and no one is more creepy than the inevitable Sales Manager, a wide-eyed gunslinger who ghosts their every activity. This asshole is the very embodiment of micromanagement by intimidation, and nothing was more disgusting and revealing than the fraudulent "role-play" in which he showed his uncanny ability to NOT LISTEN. I mean, this was ROLE PLAY using professional salesmen, but even there the tension was electric, it was just an amazing scene.

As a successful Salesman for 25 years, this documentary was depressing as hell and the misery showed on the faces of everyone involved. The body language was stunning, especially from the hapless prospects, with arms folded in defense. No one is happy here and these are pigeons who did not want to buy the goods from totally eviscerated salesmen. The last scene with the visibly defeated Badger was excruciating to watch and the mere fact that this ancient documentary has had such an impact on me is a testimony to its excellence. This is one of the greatest films on Salesmen ever, just watch it.

9/10 Stars, magnificent!

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 is a grainy documentary consisting of a crew of two (The Maysles brothers) following four door to door salesman selling high end bibles to struggling Catholic families. It is a gloomy watch as well as uncomfortable one as we barge in the front door with the wheeler dealers and sit through the pitch. It is also one of the finest representations of the genre in the history of medium.

The Badger, the Gipper, The Bull and the Rabbit make their way through the frozen snow lined streets of Boston in search of customers outed by their local parish to sell ornate bibles. Business has been slow and shows little sign of picking up from the home visits we are witness to. They decide to try out new territory in sunny Florida but first attend an employees conference in Chicago where publisher Ivan K Feltman delivers a canned speech to rally the troops. Florida's welcoming warmth (they rent convertibles)energizes the boys but sales remain cold especially for traveling vet Badger, Paul Brennan.

Within its raw simplicity Salesman blossoms with irony, metaphor and a touch of surrealism where the beleaguered Brennan finds himself lost in Opa Loka, a Moorish themed community with street names such as Ali Baba Drive and yes Sesame Street. The unctuous but affable quartet wear their glum existence on their sleeves slogging through slush, crashing at drab motels, chain smoking and going over the days disappointments. Brennan in particular is a remarkable watch as he rides his losing streak into near complete melt down in front of customers near film's end. It is one thing to be emotionally moved and impressed by a performance the likes of Lee J. Cobb in Death of a Salesman or anyone else playing the role well. In Brennan we are witnessing the real thing and it is devastating.

The days of door to door shilling for the most part have long been replaced by cable home shopping networks and the internet. Instead of attempting to get his foot in the door he is now sitting in the living room twenty four, seven. Salesman is a superb document and time capsule on the way it used to be even if it is a journey through the past grimly.

Albert and David Maysles, apparently working from a personal source (the four men, nicknamed the Gipper, the Rabbit, the Bull, and the quasi-lead being the Badger, all come from or around the Irish-Boston section that the Maysles came from as well), found themselves a kind of theatrical core to what is, in terms of the actual shooting, about as straight-on as can be in documentary cinema. Al Maysles, especially, would make the bulk of his work in the future just like this- shooting with just him on camera and a sound-guy (in this case David)- and it has the feel of being right there and up front in the situations. What the Maysles called "direct-cinema", as opposed to the term Cinema Verite. It's not exactly a news program, but it's not your run-of-the-mill documentary either. While the brothers put their subjective view on the material by, of course, choosing what not to show (who knows if the men made more sales than were actually shown, or if there were more quiet moments or conversations in the motel rooms that rambled further), and in the editing process of who to cut to or what to close-in or back away from, it feels always fresh in perspective.

We're really right there seeing what is going on during the sale, as well as seeing how the men "unwind" by complaining about the sales they didn't make, the things that kept them from what they had to do, which was put forward the "#1 bestselling book in the world" for 49.99 a month to your average Joe or Mrs. Joe down the street. What the Maysles don't ask is to make you really put a very harsh judgment either way; by both sides presented, of the men in the desperate but completely professional and slick act of selling (selling themselves probably just as much as the bible, and how getting the sale or not suddenly changes them in front of the prospective customer), and how they are behind closed doors, shooting the s***, playing cards, or driving in their cars. Most especially fascinating, however, is that the Maysles put a theatrical ring to the proceedings, like watching characters from a stage play ala O'Neill in the great drama of life- characters, by the way, who can be talked about just as real people as figures in a film.

Seeing Salesman gives a glimpse not so much into religion- they're not sermonizing here, the Maysles- but into a specific world that doesn't exist the way it used to, where men followed along leads from previous sellers, and sometimes made it through the door or not at all. There's a disarming quality to the production; we should think that these guys aren't the ones to like or identify with, that we're the ones getting peddled to and made to feel like we MUST get this or else and so on. By opening it up just by a glimpse, and how the 16mm camera goes around with the freedom of the fly-on-the-wall, it opens up the perspective. It's one of the Maysles's very best, a piece of true Americana as a time capsule.

A ground-breaking documentary when it first appeared, and made the Maysles brothers and their small crew as famous as documentarians could get in the days before VCRs and the Discovery Channel (and they'd get even more recognition for their follow-up to Salesman, Gimme Shelter).

This is an almost indescribable excursion into the daily struggles of a group of Bible salesmen, going door to door from New Jersey working class neighborhoods to Floridian trailer parks. It is "Glengarry Glen Ross" in reality, with cold-hearted threats from the guys at the top, ragged older guys complaining they've 'got the same old leads,' and younger guys hustling up the chain. The film eventually centers on an older, down and out salesman, probably the obscure prototype for Mamet's Jack Lemmon character in Glen Ross, who used to be the pacesetter, but hasn't sold anything substantial in months. The genius of this idea is that they're Bible salesmen, and we see the way they act away from the 'good Christian folks' they're trying to persuade. Filmed in handheld black and white, following the guys everywhere (dressed in their black suits and black ties they resemble the Reservoir Dogs ambling down the street with sample cases instead of guns), the film is full of chintzy sixties Americana: pink flamingos, cinderblock hotel rooms, and they all wear hats and chain smoke.

In my opinion, this is one of the ten best films made in the sixties. Not every videostore is going to have it, but it's definitely worth a few phone calls. Seek it out!

A lot of reviews have referenced Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross, but I'd add Tin Men to the list of companions to this film.

It's alternatively funny, sad, uncomfortable and depressing. It's in no way sentimental towards these men. Very little in the way of revealing a home life and family to support, to get the audience invested in their success. They are miserable, and yet plug away. If anything, the audience becomes allied with the poor potential customers of these salesmen who are hawking their tacky Bibles and religious supplements. It's really a testament to the kindness of people that they do their best to tactfully resist the incessant pitches (though the scene with the husband and his ersatz Beatles music was absolutely hilarious). That, and the sales role play scene, are definitely high points, but the film maintains a high level of interest throughout.

The complexity of the relationships between the salesmen is also expertly exhibited. A veneer of support, but with brutal and petty rivalries (a salesman riffling through his receipts as his buddy recounts his fruitless day) subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, expose the tenuous nature of this life. A weirdly entertaining film.