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Salesman - Criterion Collection
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780780024281
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0780024281
Label: Criterion
Languages: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 MonoEnglish (Subtitled),
Manufacturer: Criterion
MPN: SAL120
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 04, 2001
Running Time: 91 minutes
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1968
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Editorial Review:
Arguably the best American documentary of the 1960s, Salesman was the pivotal film of the "direct cinema" movement championed by such influential filmmakers as Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and (in this case) the Maysles brothers and their longtime collaborator Charlotte Zwerin. It catapulted Albert and David Maysles to international fame (later intensified with Gimme Shelter), and it remains the most powerful document of working-class America in the post-Kennedy era. As compelling as any fictional drama, the film follows four salesmen (nicknamed the Badger, the Gipper, the Rabbit, and the Bull, based on their particular on-the-job attributes) from Boston to Florida as they struggle to sell lavishly illustrated Bibles to reluctant, blue-collar customers as desperate to keep their money as the salesmen are to take it.
The film focuses on the anguished plight of Paul "the Badger" Brennan, an aging Boston-Irish veteran of the salesman circuit, weary of his job and unable to hide his exhaustion from customers and colleagues alike. "I don't want to seem negative," he says in one of the film's many dreary motel rooms, but Paul is negative, and meager sales reflect his attitude. The resulting portrait serves as a two-way mirror of hard-scrabble American survival, simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking, and so honestly revealing that no performance (with the possible exception of Jack Lemmon's in Glengarry Glen Ross) could ever hope to match its level of richly nuanced humanity. Door-to-door salesmen became dinosaurs with the advent of telemarketing and Internet retail, but Salesman is a timeless masterpiece of cinematic truth. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Stark, harsh reality depicted
With grainy photography and no fancy frills, the Maysles brothers present the story of several traveling Bible salesman who target mostly those who cannot afford the $50 price tag for a new Bible. One man in particular thinks he can sell, sell, sell, if he just works hard enough. But this just isn't always true, as he discovers to his dismay and disappointment late in the film. It's too bad he believed the old adage about hard work always bringing rewards and riches. This is something that viewers ... Read More
Rating: - Mick Cath'lic Bible-Peddling and the Gnashing of Badger Teeth
Yessir folks, a fine show, rush out and get your dickbeaters on this'n. For four easy payments of $8.99 this dvd can be added to your collection, via the Amazon credit card. I am seriously considering dropping the loot for it tho, I readily admit. The thing sells itself you know.
I was thoroughly amused by the plight of these four hapless gents, peddlin' Bibles looked like it had to have been the bombiggity back then!
The joyful glee these beasts portray as they play their desperate, scheming ... Read More
Rating: - Rare look into a world most of us would rather not see
Redemption isn't cheap. In this documentary it costs $49.95. In the 1960s, that was a lot of money for most people. This particular redemption, in the form of ornate Catholic Bibles, was being peddled to a bunch of mostly lower-middle-class Americans in the South and Midwest, the rust belt and the Bible belt. A group of dogged salesmen, with names like "The Rabbit," "The Gipper" and "The Badger," go around trying to sell their cases of The Holy Writ door to door. They are met mostly with rejection and we ... Read More
Rating: - The most accurate look at the sales grind. Also the Criterion dvd special features listed below
I've been in outside sales for 9 years and this is without doubt as accurate as you can get to the pain of sales as we follow these door to door bible salesman. Movies like Boiler Room and Wall Street glorify it at times and there both good movies but this shows a normal grind it out door to door sales job that is every bit accurate today as it was in the 60s. There is no doubt you can go on huge highs in sales but this is a look at the typical day to day week to week numbers game.
Jeff Shannon does a ... Read More
Rating: - A timeless film about the dual enemies of aging and failure
This film is about the trials and tribulations of four door-to-door Bible salesmen in 1968, on the eve of when their occupation was about to become extinct. Of course, the filmmakers could not know that at the time, but this fact is what adds to the sadness of this film today. The salesmen are four New Englanders named Paul "The Badger" Brennan, James "The Rabbit" Baker, "The Bull" and "The Gipper", their nicknames being derived from their individual sales tactics. Despite the holiness of their products, this ... Read More
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