Grey Gardens / The Beales of Grey Gardens - Criterion Collection (2-disc set)
by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Edie Beale, Edith Bouvier BealeDirector: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Albert Maysles
Cinematographer: David Maysles
Editor: Ellen Hovde
Editor: Muffie Meyer
Editor: Susan Froemke
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 185 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-12-05
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Grey Gardens / The Beales of Grey Gardens - Criterion Collection (2-disc set)
Movie Review: Hard to watch, hard not to watch ...
Summary: 5 Stars
Grey Gardens was initialy intended to be a documentary film on the Bouvier family, the ancestors of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill. However, after being introduced to Edith Bouvier Beale (Jackie's father "Black Jack's" sister) and her daughter (Jackie's first cousin), the focus changed ... to a story that would have been all-but-impossible for a documentary filmmaker to walk away from, even over the protests of family members.
The Beales, mother and daughter (Edie and "Little" Edie), were at one time beautiful, no doubt fashionable, wealthy, prominent members of high society, with a large mansion, "Grey Gardens," full of appropriate possessions to match. Unfortunately, Mr. Beale's death (I didn't catch when but it had to have been many years earlier) led them into a year-by-year, seemingly never-ending spiral of increasing pathetic physical ruin and personal dispair.
By the time of the documentary, they have long-since lost the ability to care for the mansion, it's possessions, themselves or their health. They have effectively been removed from current reality and exist almost entirely amid memories, many very clear to both, some with recriminations and lots with "if only's." They have seemingly lost all but perfunctory contact with their family (a brother of Edith's is said to pay the taxes) and have no visible source of income. And, seemingly as a result of the situation, have descended into a completely self-absorbed, mutually accusatory / codependent relationship, possibly diagnosable as some form of mental illness for one or both.
A really difficult, truly sad but sometimes very funny situation, made poignant by their memories of what was and by implication what could have been. In some ways they may be seen as heroic, still able to laugh under the appalling circumstances. Undoubtedly many controversial questions could be asked of the Beale's, the family, the filmmakers, the government, and society. Worth watching and thinking about from lots of viewpoints ... well done.
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Summary of Grey Gardens / The Beales of Grey Gardens - Criterion Collection (2-disc set)
Meet Big and Little Edie Beale: high-society dropouts mother and daughter reclusive cousins of Jackie O. thriving together amid the decay and disorder of their ramshackle East Hampton mansion. An impossibly intimate portrait and an eerie echo of the Kennedy Camelot Albert and David Maysles' 1976 Grey Gardens quickly became a cult classic and established Little Edie as a fashion icon and philosopher queen. Thirty years later the filmmakers revisited their landmark documentary with a sequel of sorts The Beales of Grey Gardens culled from hours of never-before-seen footage recently found in the filmmakers' vaults.System Requirements:Running Time: 185 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating:?NR UPC:?715515017923 Manufacturer No:?CC1668DDVDAlthough it's typically described as a cult phenomenon, Grey Gardens is something more than that by now. The 1975 documentary by brothers Albert and David Maysles (who filmed the proceedings and co-directed with Muffie Meyer and Ellen Hovde) has been turned into a hit Broadway show, with plans for a feature film in the offing; it's also the title of a song by Rufus Wainwright, and has been referenced on TV shows like The Gilmore Girls, The L Word, and even Rugrats. In the process, Grey Gardens has become part of the cultural zeitgeist, at least in the gay community, a circumstance that no doubt had some influence on the decision to package it with The Beales of Grey Gardens, a 90-minute assemblage of outtakes and other unused material from the original film supervised by Albert Maysles and released in 2006.
One wonders if any of this would have transpired had Edith Ewing Bouvier (known as "Big Edie") and daughter Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie") merely been garden variety eccentrics, instead of quasi-celebrities (the aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, nee Bouvier). On the other hand, there's a certain can't-turn-away-from-a-car-accident fascination that comes with watching the two Edies at home in their rundown, squalid East Hampton, Long Island estate (they were ordered to fix the place up before the documentary was shot, but it's still a dump, albeit a large one). With her endless parade of different "costumes," every one of them featuring a scarf, a towel, or some such material wrapped around her head (then in her mid-fifties, she had an oddball fashion sense that's a big part of her now-iconic status), Little Edie is quite a character. Considerably less appealing is her mother, a bitter, poisonous woman who apparently pressured her daughter to move back home and care for her after Big Edie's husband quite understandably abandoned her in the early 1950s. "My whole life, I've been ground down and insulted every minute," Little Edie confides to the camera, but she gives as good as she gets; the two of them squabble endlessly, mostly about past events and the careers they might have had (Big Edie as a singer, her daughter as a dancer and model). There are obviously many viewers who find this sort of terminal dysfunction appealing, even charming. For others, words like annoying and tedious may be more appropriate. And while The Beales of Grey Gardens offers more evidence that the two women actually cared for one another (there's also a good deal more interaction between the Beales and the filmmakers, along with various other visitors), it's essentially just more of the same. --Sam Graham
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