Salesman (1968)
Maysles Films

Description

The Maysles follow four door-to-door Bible salesmen in the mid-1960s as they try to make a living in wintry Boston and another town north of Miami. Paul "Badger" Brennan, Charlie "Gipper" McDevitt, James "Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "Bull" Martos try everything they can to get reluctant Catholic housewives to sign on the dotted line.

Tags

1960s, Bible

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Amazon user reviews

Door-to-door salesmen became dinosaurs with the advent of telemarketing and Internet retail, but Salesman is a timeless masterpiece of cinematic truth.
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10 DVD Outsider | Slarek

Stripped of many of the components of modern documentary works - there is no presenter, no voice-over, no fancy graphics, no postmodernist emphasis on technique and presentation - Salesman seems as fresh now as it ever did.
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10 New York Magazine | Vincent Canby

It's such a fine, pure picture of a small section of American life that I can't imagine its ever seeming irrelevant, either as a social document or as one of the best examples of what's called cinema vérité or direct cinema.
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10 DVD Talk | Stuart Galbraith IV

Salesman is a seemingly minor, isolated tragedy with a far-reaching, universal theme about the American working man. A great film and a must-see.
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10 DVD Times | Noel Megahey

Hopefully, I’ll have delivered my pitch well here, established a level of connection that the reader might identify with in the film, and sold you on the fact that Salesman is a richly rewarding film and relevant to you. And I’m prepared to offer a lifetime guarantee of total satisfaction on that.
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10 digitallyobsessed.com | Mark Zimmer

An extremely moving look at the life of the Bible huckster, shot with immediacy and a sense of reality that exceeds the usual documentary.
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10 The Guardian | Andrew Pulver

Though the Maysles are best known for their hippy-era music docos Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter, as well as the opaque weirdness of Grey Gardens from 1975, Salesman stands as the movie where they really found their voice as leading American proponents of the "direct cinema" aesthetic.
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9.2 DVD Verdict | Patrick Naugle

Not to be missed, Salesman is a fascinating chronicle about a bygone era, a job that no longer exists, and the lonely feeling that sometimes comes with selling the scriptures door-to-door.
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8.3 Old School Reviews | John Nesbit

Salesman represents a remarkably disturbing visual document of a lifestyle that may well be gone forever while exposing the underbelly of capitalism that remains live and well across America.
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7.0 DVD Authority

Salesman is not always an upbeat piece and it can be depressing at times, but it is well worth a look, even if you don't usually like documentary features.
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