Salesman, 1969

My mother wanted to watch a movie last night so I turned on Albert and David Maysles' cinema verite film Salesman on the Criterion Channel.

I found the movie deeply depressing when I watched it before. I heard that audiences were left crying in the theaters when it was first shown. About door-to-door Bible salesman. They sold lavishly illustrated Catholic Bibles for the equivalent of over $350 in today's money. They were trying to sell them to working class people.

The salesman were pitiful. They had a terrible job, trying to sell something people had no need for. The salesmen shared motel rooms, all dressed in suits, never looking relaxed. The movie focuses on Paul who is failing badly.

But my mother and I were mostly laughing as we watched.

Whenever I go into a church, I'm always surprised at how religious it is. I assume people go to church largely for social reasons. They must serve other social functions or no one would go. Karl Marx took his children to church for the music. There are people who say they're "spiritual but not religious". The customers in this movie struck me as being religious but not spiritual. But they were prepared to spend money they didn't have on it, willing to buy a bible on credit.

The movie made white ethnicity seem a lot less appealing. They would talk about the Irish and the Italians. They had a Polish buyer in one scene. It just seemed depressing. The movie focused on Paul who was Irish and tried to use that, but in the motel room, he would slip into an Irish-American accent and do impressions of his relatives.

It's a little like the trailer for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The announcer tells you to see the movie "for your own protection", like it will teach you how to guard against big violent women.

In this movie, you can see right through every sales technique and thus be prepared for them. Long before anyone has decided to buy, they ask which color they would prefer and which payment plan would be best for them. They seem like nice guys who love talking to you, but as soon as they get their check or realize you're not buying, they're out of there. We see Paul getting payment out of a woman who had changed her mind. She and her husband decided they couldn't afford it. He tells her he's the district manager and will have to fine the salesman she talked to if he doesn't get payment. He claims they already sent in the order. She suggests he come back when her husband is there and he tells her he couldn't possibly.

Well, if you're going to be pitiful, you may as well be overbearing, too.

I said something about how pitiful they were, but my mother said they were just like nine tenths of the people out there.