Classic Movie Review: Gimme Shelter (1970)

Gimme Shelter (1970)

Directed by: Albert Maysles & David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin.

 

Gimme Shelter is one of the great rock documentaries of all time – and one of the best “end of the 1960s” films ever made, even if they probably didn’t realize it at that time. It is a film about the Rolling Stone and their 1969 tour – climaxing with the now infamous concert at Altamount Speedway – where a member of the Hell’s Angels – who were hired to provide security for the concert – kills Meredith Hunter –a young black man, who tried to get up on stage, was beaten by the Hell’s Angels – and then pulled a gun, at which point a Hell’s Angel member stabbed him at least six times, killing him. The documentary crew – who filmed the mounting tension all day at the concert – capture most of this incident on camera. And the footage is shocking.

 

That is probably what the documentary is best remembered for now – nearly 50 years later. Well that, and the Maysles brothers (and Charlotte Zwerin) inviting the Stones into the editing suite to see the footage as they assemble it, to get their reaction – which ends up being shockingly blasé since they basically just watched one of their fans be killed. Like all the Maysles film, this is direct cinema – it captures the events as they happen, and doesn’t resort to talking heads, interviews, archive footage, voiceover, etc. to make their film. Still, it is a fascinating example of documentary ethics, playing out in real time in front of the camera – what footage do they use, not just of the killing, but of the Stones watching the killing. For a movie about the Rolling Stones in 1970, it’s surprising that there is no sex – or even talk of sex – in the film, nor any drugs – although you can certainly tell at times various members of the band are stoned, drunk or some combination thereof. If all of this was at the insistence of the band – in an attempt to try and protect their image – then it’s doubly surprising that they have seemed okay with the footage of them not really reacting to a killing in front of them. They have, after all, kept another documentary – Cocksucker Blues – pretty much unseen for decades because of the way they are portrayed in it.

 

Now, I should be clear – the film doesn’t really blame the Stones for the death that happened at Altamount. It doesn’t entirely let them off the hook either though. They were involved in setting everything up – it was supposed to be a kind of Woodstock but in California this time. We see famed attonery Melvin Belli (played by Brian Cox in Fincher’s masterpiece Zodiac) negotiating with people to get the concert up and running – to secure the Speedway, to find parking, etc. And when we get to Altamount itself, we see the growing tension and violence simmering all day. The lead singer of Jefferson Airplane is knocked out by a Hell’s Angel – the other members of the band call for people to calm down, to little avail. We see Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead show up – although when they learn about the Jefferson Airplane incident, they decide not to play themselves. As the day progesses, and the Hell’s Angels get more and more drunk – and violent (they come armed with pool cues), and the audience starts to respond– someone needed to step in before things got too far. And nobody did.

 

All of this is what I remembered about Gimme Shelter from my original viewing – probably about 20 years ago now. What surprised me watching it again recently is how much of the documentary takes place well before we get to Altamount. The concert footage at Madison Square Garden – which kicked off the tour – is pretty much given more time than the actual music from Altamount. It also contains the films most memorable music moment – not from the Stones, but from opening act Tina Turner, practically fellating her microphone. It also has footage of the Stones recording at Muscle Shoals – Wild Horses can be heard coming together. As much as Altamount is the star attraction to Gimme Shelter – it’s far from the only thing here.

 

And what’s even more fascinating is how the Maysles and Zwerin cram all this into just 91-minutes. The film accomplishes a lot in that time period – including being an unwitting portrait of one of the defining incidents that signaled the end of the 1960s, and the coming 1970s. It’s easy to see in retrospect that events like the Manson murders and Altamount really were the death blows to sixties idealism, and led to the rot and cynicism of the 1970s. They didn’t know that at the time – making this documentary even greater. For many Salesman or Grey Gardens is the Maysles masterpiece – either would be fine choices. For me though, it’s Gimme Shelter.

Classic Movie Review: Salesman (1969)

Salesman (1969)

Directed by: Albert Maysles & David Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin.

 

It is odd to think that a film made in 1969, about a profession that has all but become extinct in the decades since (and was already on its way out at the time) still feels very much like a portrait of modern America. Salesman is a documentary that follows a few Bible salesmen, who work door-to-door, trying to sell their expensive, illustrated bibles to people who don’t really need them, and cannot really afford them. They do this with the help of local churches – that’s where the names come from – and on behalf of a company who we see sell the salesmen themselves on a life that are assuredly never going to have. Wealth is not coming to any of these guys – no matter how good they are at selling. The film really is about how the salesmen exploit the people they are selling to, at the same time as being exploited by the company they work for. And what is the filmmaker’s role in all of this? After all, when the salesmen show on the doorstep of the people they are trying to convince to buy bibles, they are doing so with a film crew in tow. And remember, this is 1969, when people didn’t obsessively document every moment of their lives – and the equipment needed to film it all was large and cumbersome. The reactions of all involved certainly changed because they were being filmed.

 

Salesman was the first feature film by the Maysles Brothers, Albert and David, who alongside co-director and editor Charlotte Zwerin would follow this up with Gimme Shelter (1970) – one of the greatest of all rock documentaries, and a definitive statement on the end of the 1960s, and who (with different filmmakers, not Zwerin) would make Grey Gardens (1975) – one of the most highly regarded documentaries of all time just a few years later. Salesman is probably not quite as well-known as those other two – it doesn’t have the benefit of the Rolling Stones, or the eccentricities of Big and Little Edie to make it as iconic as those films. But it is, in its way, a quietly sad film about its subjects – all of whom are chasing their version of the American Dream, and not really getting anywhere.

 

The sales tactics the salesman use on the poor people whose houses they invade could be described as high pressured, but friendly. They pretend to never hear the word no, but they quite clearly hear every word they say, because everything they do say, the salesmen turn it back on them, as another reason why they simply have to have this bible. Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t you think you would get a lot of use out of this? And who cannot afford just a couple of dollars a week – for months on end. The people they meet almost all try and be friendly – even if they know they don’t want it – they don’t want to say they don’t want it.

 

The film ends up focusing on four salesmen – but really hones in on Paul – aka The Badger (they all have animal names) who on the surface seems like the happiest of the salesman – he is full of little jokes and one liners, he sings to himself in the car – but is also the one who probably more than anyone else sees through what they are doing. And yet, he is the saddest of them all as well – a Willy Loman type, but one who realizes that he is Willy Loman, and is just tired of it all. Where the rest of them are at least going through the motions of trying to be successful, The Badger no longer much cares. There is stench of desperation about him, and perhaps that’s why his sales are down.

 

Because, of course, in America the confident man usually wins. Everyone knows, on some level, that all of these salesmen are there to take advantage of them. No one really needs a $50 bible – especially when you struggle to put food on the table, and already have a bible of you own. But if you can confidentially sell your crap, people want to buy, they want to believe – even if they know somewhere they shouldn’t. Hell, you can become President that way.

Classic Movie Review: Grey Gardens (1976)

Grey Gardens (1976)

Directed by: Albert & David Maysles & Ellen Hovde & Muffie Meyer.

 

There will always be a question in documentary filmmaking about whether filmmakers are exploiting their subject or not – and it’s something that seems to come up every time Grey Gardens is discussed. The film, one of the most famous of all documentaries, is about Big Edie Beale and her daughter, Little Edie Beale, living in a dilapidated mansion that looks like a wreck from the outside, and even worse on the inside. The Beales came to the attention of the filmmakers – brothers Albert & David Maysles, along with co-directors Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer – because they were distant relatives of Jackie Onassis – but the filmmakers found them so fascinating, they just kept coming back. The film was made just a few years before Big Edie died, and it portrays the dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship warts in all – the two of them bicker constantly, sometimes passive-aggressively, and sometimes not so passively. They are, to put it kindly, eccentric. They have the trappings of wealth – the large house in the rich neighbor, accent that denote class and “breeding” – but the money isn’t quite there anymore. Big Edie’s husband – Little Edie’s father – left them years ago, and there isn’t a lot of talk about him. Little Edie never married, although there is talk of a stream of gentlemen suitors that she hated – and regrets of not heading to Europe when the war started like so many of her friends – who ended up married – did.

 

Grey Gardens is about memory and regret – and about how these two women are trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of misery, argument, accusations, forgiveness and then back again. Little Edie keeps threatening to go back to New York – she was happy in New York once, and live the life she was meant to – the life she could have lived, if her mother didn’t need her so much. Her mother pokes and prods her right back – telling her she doesn’t need her as much as Little Edie thinks. To a certain degree, both of them are constantly performing for each other – they both need each other, and neither want to admit that they need each other, which shows just how much they really do. Both of them are constantly performing – although you get the impression that even if they Maysles and their cameras were not there, the two Beale women would be doing to same thing. Both of the women are theatrical by nature – and while they love having the camera on them, I don’t think the absence of them would have caused the pair to stop performing.

 

I know the Maysles and company have always claimed that the film is not exploitive, but if we’re being honest it is – at least in part. Little Edie’s flamboyant monologues are often quite funny, and we are certainly invited to laugh during the course of the movie, but are we laughing at the Beales? They don’t seem to be laughing, so perhaps we are. And yet, the film also gives the Beales precisely what they want – and they seemed to no regrets about it. They are being given an audience – at first of just the Maysles brothers themselves, and ultimately to millions of others. And the brothers wisely let the Beales tell their own story completely – whether or not that’s the truth. Whatever happened to lead the pair to live this way, what happened to the house, why they’re alone, and why they’re only living in a few rooms of a huge home – is a story that the Maysles could probably have explored from another point of view – or at least given wider context. They don’t though – and that’s for the best. The film is about memory more than anything, and why let facts or context interfere with that?

 

I do believe that in many cases, yes, documentary films do exploit their subjects. The question really is are the subjects willing participants in that exploitation, and whether the portrait that the filmmakers end up with is an honest one. In the case of Grey Gardens, the answer to both questions is a resounding yes – which may just be why it’s one of the best docs you will ever see.