"After all the highways, and the trains, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive."Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman The days of the door-to-door salesman are now dim memories of Americana, along with Burma Shave signs and real cherry Cokes from the neighborhood drugstore. It took a special kind of man to suffer the indignities of continual rejection by refusing the security of a regular paycheck and benefits to pursue the great American dream. All jokes aside, the life of a travelling salesman is no easy street, and filmmakers Albert and David Maysles intimately capture the lonely existence of a real life Willy Loman in their 1969 documentary Salesman.
From my door-to-door experience between semesters
in the late sixties, I can attest how tough this profession is.
I sold Bible literature in Oklahoma that summer of '69,
and in many ways it was the toughest job I've ever had.
Relying on my own resources, I had to find a way to live
those three months on whatever down payments I could
muster from the customers—and I soon discovered that
not everyone is going to let the strange visitor claiming to
be from the church inside the door—and even fewer
were actually going to buy Bible literature from this
stranger. Despite continual rejection and numerous
doors slammed in my face, I'm thankful for the things
I learned along the way—I'm familiar with the required
attitude and mentality and can spot those "cunning" used
car salesmen tricks and techniques.
The experience also helps me appreciate the
Maysles' little-seen documentary that is now
thankfully preserved definitively by the Criterion
Collection with its usual array of fine DVD extra features.
The film's most amazing aspect is that it was made
at all. Knowing how difficult it is to get inside
suspicious prospects' homes, the idea that the
salesman can get inside for a pitch with a two-man
camera crew in tow is mind-boggling. But they
managed—usually by explaining to the customer
that they were merely following the salesman
around to film his presentation, proving that some
Americans are willing to do most anything for
the remote possibility of achieving their fifteen minutes of fame.
The Maysles follow four Irish Catholic Bible
salesmen from Boston on their daily routines
in the field and uneasy camaraderie in their motel
rooms and cafes. Raymond "the Bull" Martos
plugs along, Charlie "the Gipper" McDevitt
jokes his way through, James "the Rabbit" Baker
effectively sticks with the program, but Paul
"the Badger" Brennan becomes the "star" of the
documentary by being "different." The filmmakers
describe him as the "one who shows humanity,"
but professional sales people will recognize him
as the guy with low self-esteem who gives up
on the program and heads inevitably towards failure.
While Lee J. Cobb and Dustin Hoffman are
well known for playing Willie Loman on stage, Paul
Brennan isWilly Loman in the flesh. He even exclaims,
"They say Alaska's good territory," at one point—had
the filmmakers been able to visualize his
numerous silent reveries, they might even have
located the imaginary Ben.
One early telling scene, after a tough winter day
in the field, shows Paul letting off steam to
his mostly silent roommate, Raymond. As he
prefaces his remarks with claims of "not being
negative," he proceeds to whine about his
inability to get inside doors to make his pitch,
how sick he is of people's excuses, and
how awful the territory is with its "Guineas."
Although the filmmakers pity him, others will
see him as an insincere, manipulative "dime
a dozen" loser. Soon after this scene, the
filmmakers show the isolated salesman
pensively peering out the train window on
his way to a sales meeting in Chicago and
edit in an audio narrative from his boss Kenny:"If a guy's not a success, he's got nobody to blame but himself. What everybody's got to do is to quit making alibis and excuses and accept responsibility if a success or failure." Had the filmmakers focused on the other
three salesmen, who were more in line with
the positive thinking program, the
documentary would take on an entirely
different tone, one much less interesting
to most audiences. Professional sales people
show their own inspirational videos, designed
to fire up the troops and get them to dream
the big dream to pursue their goals—the
Everyman types who start with nothing
and succeed. This documentary becomes
poignant because it avoids the traditional
hype by focusing on the Everyman least
likely to succeed.
The Maysles brothers prefer to call their
documentary technique "cinema direct"
(as opposed to "cinema verite) for their
method of simply filming whatever
happens and avoiding narration. Although
they capture what truly happens, they
certainly editorialize and pointedly
emphasize essentially anti-Capitalist themes
with their editing selections. Their selection
of portraying door-to-door Bible salesmen
is deliberate—the Maysles brothers seeing
this as a quintessentially ideological American
film combining Capitalism and Religion with
the symbolic Bible as salable product.
Nothing is staged, but with massive amounts
of raw footage to work with, the filmmakers
craft a cynical insider's view of selling in
America by focusing mostly on a rather
unlikable loser—a man who hums "If I Were
a Rich Man" in the car while bemoaning his
lot in life on the road, preys upon one
poverty stricken woman's basic goodness
by lying and laying on a Catholic guilt trip,
and has nothing more to discuss with his
wife than assure her that he's not driving
too fast. (In the extras we learn that Paul
will trade in his Bibles to sell aluminum
siding the next year and will soon die
from rheumatism)
But filmmakers are not required to offer
"balanced" coverage for documentaries,
especially when the project isn't slated
for broadcast journalism. Salesman
represents a remarkably disturbing
visual document of a lifestyle that may
well be gone forever while exposing the
underbelly of capitalism that remains live
and well across America.
Most effective are the long silences...the
empty stares found upon the faces of these
four salesmen as they go through their
daily rituals over coffee—the same banality
that you'll find in corporate America, where
the only thing these men have in common
is the business deal. With deft juxtapositioning
and editing, the filmmakers successfully
question the core values of capitalism,
making this real life Death of a Salesman
scenario essential viewing.
link: http://oldschoolreviews.com/rev_60/salesman.htm
|
|
El documental es algo pesado bueno la verdad para mi fue muy pesado y muy desesperante, sin embargo creo que el punto principal que los hermanos Maysales estaban tratando de expresar queda súper claro, ya que todos sabemos que cualquier trabajo es muy pesado aunque el trabajo de los "Salesman" (vendedores de Biblias) tiene un estilo único de vender a la fuerza.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario