Review of Salesman (1969) by Jonathan G — 05 Mar 2010

A superb - and superbly depressing - piece of tranche de vie, a nonfictional Death of a Salesman without commentary in which we see four miserable Bible salesmen almost dying before our eyes as they wade through a futile, Beckettian landscape of botched interactions.

The central figure, Paul, with his increasingly embarrassing Irish impersonations and clear loss of purpose, is by far the most real, and the most compelling, while the the other three are more furtive passers on the way to what would seem to be an inevitably desolate conclusion.

Some of the insights into the class life of the American public who examine (and more often than not, fail to purchase) their spiritual wares are unforgettable, and the naturalism with which the Maysles shot this is astonishing given the date: at times it is horrible to watch; it is equally impossible to look away, and the final breakdown and humiliation of Paul is as memorable a culmination to a film about nullity as we're likely to see.

The beauty of the film, of course, is that these men are vendors of Bibles, but they could just as easily be selling any other gimcrack or gewgaw capitalism serves up to any of us; that in a horrible sense this works well because we are all, deep down, hackneyed and roadworn Bible salesman, with little heart and increasingly little pride.