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"[Grey Gardens] transformed the art and craft of documentary film … an otherworldly experience not quite like anything else in the history of cinema." – Salon
In the autumn of 1973, Albert (Iris, MIFF 2015) and David Maysles (Salesman, MIFF 1970) spent six weeks filming "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Beale, an elderly mother and middle-aged daughter (who were cousins of Jackie Kennedy) living in a run-down mansion in New York State's hyper-affluent Hamptons district. The result, Grey Gardens, became one of the most celebrated American documentaries ever made.
The eponymous estate, strewn with rubbish and overrun by wild animals, is the backdrop for a codependent relationship between two women who have long ago given up on outside society. Little Edie in particular shines through: with her one-of-a-kind fashion sense and performative relationship with the camera, hers is a tragicomic character stranger and more compelling than any fictional creation could be.
"A funny, beautiful, and horrifying world of loss and regret … the subjects of Grey Gardens are fallen aristocrats straight out of Andy Warhol's imagination." – The AV Club