Grey Gardens

We stumbled upon the documentary, Grey Gardens, last Sunday and got "sucked in" without warning. Everyone who entered the room became transfixed on the television and the haunting images of Edith and Edie who seemed to be living out their lives in practically one room of a large filthy mansion on the beach, eating ice cream and corn on the cob (which was cooked on the bedside table)--and the cat urinating on edith's bed and her unbelievable words, "i thrive on it [the smell]." We had not seen the beginning and wondered what we were watching and how these aristocratic women managed to get in the position they were in. Spellbinding! a must see!!!!

I saw this film a couple of weeks ago, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. It stars two spellbinding characters in what is unfortunately a mediocre documentary. To get the true story of the Beales, I had to wade through all of the DVD's bonus material and commentaries and search the web.

Although the Maysles and their fans (not to mention Edith and Edie themselves) bristle at the suggestion that this film is exploitative, this is exploitation in the truest sense of the word. Very little effort is every made to explain the Beales or how they came to the condition they were in - the Maysles approach seems to be to just turn the camera on and wait for Edith and Edie to say something outrageous. The sound, even on the Criterion re-release is poor and difficult to follow. Although I appreciate this film was made somewhat early in the history of documentary film, it's ironic to compare it to Geraldo Rivera's (!) far superior series on the sexual abuse of mentally retarded patients at Willowbrook State School in Staten Island from 1972, four years before Grey Gardens was shot.

To paraphrase a review in the New Yorker, there were many things Edith and Edie needed in their lives, and a documentary wasn't one of them.

As for Edith and Edie, the thing I kept thinking while watching the film was "where the hell is their family"? They were living in dangerous, unhealthy, unsafe conditions. How is it that Jackie O, married to one of the richest men on Earth (or the wealthy Bouvier family themselves) couldn't afford to get Edith and Edie a decent home? Or at the very least hire a part-time housekeeper or caregiver to come in and keep an eye on them both? It's shameful and a lasting disgrace to the entire Bouvier family.

Although this review may sound negative I would strongly recommend Grey Gardens to anyone who enjoys documentaries. Perhaps someday someone will come along and do a documentary about this documentary - bringing in the rich backstory (and afterstory) of the Beales and the whole subsection of Hamptons society in the 1970's.

I took this out arbitrarily from the library the other night, having no idea of the film's cult, influence, or that it is currently being staged as a musical.(!) Most of the comments here are on target, it's moving, funny, sad, and yes, a tad exploitive despite the best intentions of the filmmakers. The expanded Chriterion edition is a must for anyone who loved it when it came out.

I think you can also see in little Edie the fall of a class that sort of disappeared, you can hear it in old films of Jackie O too; people just don't talk like that anymore. I think as a documentary, it would have been interesting to get more information about how the home fell into disrepute, Old Edie at least still seems aware of what's going on to a certain degree; couldn't She see the once spectacular home disintegrating?

Yet the film's subject is the life the two women have constructed for themselves now, a real life Tennesse Williams one act. Well worth your time.

Very sad view into these women's lives. One reviewer said this documentary shows the House was not as bad as the legend claimed. Well this was after Jackie and Lee has it cleaned up. It was back to it's horrible condition by the time Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee bought it. Quinn said to get rid of the smell they had to rip up floors and tear down walls. You clearly see in the film cats going to the bathroom everywhere and no one cleans it up. The mattresses were filthy and they didn't even have sheets on the bed. These women were mentally ill. If you read the history, which you get none of in this film, the ex husband and sons tried to get them to sell years before but Big Edie refused.

... such as what happened to the Bouvier/Beale money that bought the 28 room mansion that mother and daughter live in and is in disrepair? I know that Big Edie was divorced in 1931, and it sounded like "little Edie" had the advantages of an expensive education through college, which would have been right before WWII. What changed? There is no narration here, nor do the documentary makers ask questions. They just let the cameras roll and record whatever happens. Big Edie is in her late 70s yet retains a kind of beauty. However, she talks over little Edie whenever they are in the same room, making it difficult to understand either woman.

What is clear visually is that they are both living in squalor. A cat defecates behind a very old portrait of Big Edie and both Edies laugh about being glad somebody gets to do what they want? Nobody tries to clean it up. Big Edie spends her time on a filthy mattress with stuff she might need stacked on top, yet seems to have no trouble with mobility. They make food for the cameramen including pate on crackers that looks like cat food on crackers. I would want a tetanus shot first.

Little Edie has a mountain of regret. She talks about how she wanted to be a dancer, how somebody wanted to marry her but her mother drove him away, and how she has been taking care of her mother due to her health on and off since the second world war. She mentions how much she hates the country and misses the noise of the city. Little Edie is remarkably well preserved. When this film was made she was 56 but she could pass for forty. She color coordinates all of her wardrobes including her scarves and headdresses that hide her alopecia, yet she won't mop the floor. Shades of faded feelings of being aristocracy perhaps?

Another question I had that went unanswered was where were big Edie's sons? Both lived into the 1990's, yet they are nowhere to be found. Maybe they had the sense to get out of Dodge.

Why are these recluses the subject of a documentary in the first place? Because big and little Edie are Jackie Kennedy Onnasis' aunt and cousin, respectively, and because Suffolk County was trying to evict them based on the condition of the house and grounds - there was no running water at one point - until Jackie supplied the funds to get the estate up to snuff.

Don't look for lots of answers here, because there are really none. It is just a fascinating portrait of two recluses who have slipped into their own form of normality although it looks horrifying to outsiders.