A seductively interesting study in eccentricity, GREY GARDENS is a documentary portrait of an elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter, who live in a rundown mansion tucked within the wealthy enclave of East Hampton, New York. Harshly criticized by some observers for its alleged
exploitation of its subjects, the picture is probably the most controversial specimen of a school of nonfiction filmmaking known as cinema verite, a style noted for its nondidactic tone and recessive point of view.
The Maysles brothers, David and Albert, were making a documentary about Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Onassis's half-sister. During the shooting, they were introduced to two women both named Edith Bouvier Beale, an aunt and first cousin of the celebrated sisters. The Bouvier family had put Radziwill
in charge of shaping up the Beales' ramshackle 28-room home, "Grey Gardens," after embarrassing newspaper headlines disclosed that the local board of health had condemned it. When the brothers' attention began shifting from their original subject to the seedy socialites in the broken-down mansion
by the ocean, Radziwill bowed out, and GREY GARDENS was born. "Big Edie," the older Beale, was not in favor of the project at first, but "Little Edie," her daughter, was enthusiastic from the start.
Presumably supported by Bouvier subsidies, Big and Little Edie live together in their own hermetic world, a secluded island of clutter, cats, and caterwauling. Both women, particularly the younger one, appear to be a bit touched. Their principal topic of conversation (and the film's unofficial
emcee) is Little Edie, a former New York debutante. Her voice, a curious hybrid of Katharine Hepburn's and Jean Harlow's, corroborates one of GREY GARDENS' implicit insights: that the upper classes have more in common with the lower classes than either group has with the middle.
To some extent, this odd duo resemble the false naifs of Andy Warhol films--they know they're on public display and have decided, "if this be exploitation, let's make the most of it." Both of them are frustrated performers. Big Edie sings--frequently and horridly (an old record we hear indicates
that she once possessed a passably pleasant, old-fashioned soprano warble). Little Edie likes to break into silly drum majorette routines; she is, however, redeemed by a haunting "mad dance" she performs at movie's end. Once a great beauty and still fetching in her mid-50s, the leggy Little Edie
seems often to be on the verge of changing into or out of one of her singular makeshift ensembles, as the camera looks away. (Ellen Hovde, one of the movie's trio of editors, reported that she spliced out several flashes of Little Edie in the seminude.)
The running argument: Little Edie insists that her failure to launch a successful career in this or that, or to marry someone or other, is the result of her mother's stifling dependence on her. Big Edie counters that the daughter has figuratively made her own bed. Tears are shed, tantrums are
thrown, but nothing ever seems to change. As the film lengthens, Little Edie, getting increasingly girlish and frisky by the minute, steps forward and all but takes over this Chekhovian drama (adapted by Tennessee Williams?) until, for long stretches, the screen is monopolized by the image of the
daughter in the background kibbitzing.
"Like most cinema verite projects," speculated Variety, "GREY GARDENS will raise the inevitable questions about cruelty, exploitation, greed and exhibitionism." Variety was right. John Simon, a notorious grouch, called the movie "repugnant," and many agreed with him. Most of the other reviewers,
however, applauded GREY GARDENS--including the London Sunday Times critic, who deemed it "one of the oddest, most beautiful films ever." Both Beales reportedly loved the finished product, and Hovde recalled: "I sat with [Little] Edie at Lincoln Center when she saw it for the first time with an
audience. She laughed, she cried, she enjoyed it."
Perhaps the movie's value, or lack of it, lies not in the input of the Beales, the Maysles, et al., but in the degree of seriousness audiences bring to the theater. Some viewers will be shocked, some will be touched, but, unfortunately, the spectators this sad story is most likely to attract,
amuse, and vindicate are the sort whose obsession with the upper crust, especially its blue-blooded stratum, is fed by envy and spite--each an unhealthy attribute on its own, but poisonous in combination with the other.
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