Editing Salesman (1969 film) (section)

==Reception==

At the time of the documentary's initial release, the film critic for ''[[The New York Times|New York Times]]'', [[Vincent Canby]], praised both its content and structure in his April 18, 1969 review:{{blockquote|"Salesman", which opened yesterday at the 68th Street Playhouse, is a documentary feature about four door-to-door Bible salesmen who move horizontally through the capitalistic dream. 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... It is fact, photographed and recorded with extraordinarily mobile camera and sound equipment, and then edited and carefully shaped into a kind of cinematic mural of faces, words, motel rooms, parlors, kitchens, streets, television images, radio music—even weather.<ref name="NYT69"/>}} Documentary filmmaker [[James Blue]] once said of Albert Maysles that "his cinema is one in which ethics and aesthetics are interdependent, where beauty starts with honesty, where a cut or a change in camera angle can become not only a possible aesthetic error, but also a 'sin' against truth."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fns99n5.html|title=Film Notes - Gimme Shelter and Salesman|website=www.albany.edu}}</ref> [[Gene Siskel]] of the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' included ''Salesman'' on his list of the ten best films of 1970.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://newspapers.com/clip/82137144/gene-siskels-top-ten-films-of-1970/|title=Critic's Choice: 10 Best Movies of 1970|work=[[Chicago Tribune]]|date=January 3, 1971|first=Gene|last=Siskel|accessdate=July 5, 2022|via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> In late 1970, however, [[Pauline Kael]] of ''[[The New Yorker]]'' expressed her problems with the film in her negative review of the Maysles' subsequent documentary ''[[Gimme Shelter (1970 film)|Gimme Shelter]]''. She insists in that same review that ''Salesman'' is not truly direct cinema and alleges that the production was "set up" and that its principal characters are effectively acting. Kael even accuses the Maysles of "recruit[ing] Paul Brennan, who was in the roofing and siding business, to play a bible salesman."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Kael |first=Pauline |date=December 19, 1970 |title=Gimme Shelter (film review) |url=http://thedocumentaryblog.com/2007/09/10/pauline-kael-vs-gimme-shelter/ |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |location=New York |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150306233607/http://thedocumentaryblog.com/2007/09/10/pauline-kael-vs-gimme-shelter/ |archive-date=March 6, 2015 |access-date=October 19, 2015 }}</ref> In response, the Maysles threatened to sue ''The New Yorker'' for [[libel]] and rebutted Kael's claims in an [[open letter]] sent to the magazine. Since ''The New Yorker''{{'}}s policy at the time prohibited the publication of such correspondence, the letter did not appear in print until 1996, when it was included in the appendix to the anthology ''Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary''.<ref name=faber>{{cite book |editor1-last=Cousins |editor1-first=Mark |editor2-last=Macdonald |editor2-first=Kevin |date=1996 |title=Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p5hYXXWj3goC&pg=PT343 |location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |isbn=978-0571177233 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Vogels |first=Jonathan B. |date=2005 |title=The Direct Cinema of David and Albert Maysles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vNUT4AvyjhUC&pg=PA97 |location=[[Carbondale, Illinois]] |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |isbn=978-0809326433 }}</ref> The letter, which is signed by all three of the film's credited directors, states in part:{{Blockquote|text=Miss Kael seems to be implying that we, as filmmakers, are responsible for the events we film by suggesting that we set them up or helped to stage them. In referring to our previous film, ''Salesman'', Miss Kael says "the Maysles brothers recruited Paul Brennan, who was in the roof-and-siding business, to play a Bible salesman." Paul Brennan had been selling Bibles for eight years prior to the making of our film and was selling Bibles when we met him. No actors were used in ''Salesman''. The men were asked to simply go on doing what they normally did while we filmed. ...

We don't know where Miss Kael got her facts. We do know that her researcher phoned Paul Brennan, one of the Bible salesmen, and told him that ''The New Yorker'' was interested in doing an article about him. He made it quite clear to her that he was a Bible salesman and not a roof-and-siding salesman when we made the film about him. Aside from his own statement, this could easily have been checked out by contacting his employers, the Mid-American Bible Company. |author=Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin<ref name=faber />}}