Grey Gardens 1976

      In this film viewers meet a mother and daughter.  They are high-society dropouts and the reclusive cousins of Jackie Onassis.  They manage to thrive together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampton NY mansion.  Their home is an eerily ramshackle echo of the American Camelot.  This film was something of an accident?  Albert and David Maysles came across Edith Bouvier Beale and Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale when they were involved in another project.  It was a movie about the childhood of Lee Radziwell’s.  Lee is the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  As part of their research, the Maysles brothers were introduced to the Beales and they were captivated by their world.  Deciding not to make the Radzwill film, they turned instead to the Beales.  A year after first meeting the two women they began filming.

     The Maysles brothers pay visits to Edith Bouvier Beale and she is nearing 80 years old.  Her daughter is Edie and they are both reclusive.  They live with cats and raccoons in Grey Gardens.  Edith is dry and quick-witted, a singer, married but later separated and a member of high society.  Edie talks rapidly, readily and sometimes incessantly, she dresses as she puts it for combat in tight ensembles that include scarves wrapped around her head.  There are hints that Edie came home 24 years before to be cared for rather than to care for her mother.  The women address the camera, talking over each other and moving from the present to events years before.  They're odd but they have a flinty affection for each other.  2* (I didn't like this movie)

     This 1970’s documentary about a codependent mother and daughter who are related to Jacqueline is a tragic but also comic portrait of two women who have seen better days.  The behavior and living conditions of these two might be a bit too much for younger and less mature viewers.  "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" are often seen in their shared bedroom drinking rum and Coke.  They argue about the events that led to their shared destiny of living together for decades in the crumbling mansion.  Their behavior is erratic and eccentric but what emerges is a provocative portrait of two fiercely independent women.  They lived through a time in high society where the options for women who wanted to shape their own destinies were limited.  Now they must live with the choices they have made and accept the consequences.    

     
95 min documentary directed and written by Ellen Hovde, David and Albert Maysies, Muffie Meyer with Edith Bouvier Beale, Edith ‘Little Edie’ bouvier Beale, Brooks Hyers, Norman Vincent Peale, Jack Helmuth, David Maysles, Jerry Torre, Lois Wright.

Note:  Imdb 7.6 out of 10 with 12,547 reviews, Roger Ebert 4*, Rotten Tomatoes 94% with 33 critic reviews 85% with 5000+ audience scores, Common Sense Media Brian Costello, age 13+, 4* out of 5*, 1* sex, 2* language and drinking, drugs & smoking, Letterboxd 4* out of 5* with 306 reviews.

Special Note:  According to a 2009 interview in the San Francisco  Chronicle, Edith ‘LIttle’ Edie Bouvier Beale wore a beautiful red dress to the 1975 premiere of this film.  But she wore it backwards with the zipper in the front.  Drew Barrymore played Little Edie in the TV movie Gray Gardens (2009) but in the original Grey Gardens (1975), David Maysies asked Little Edie who she would like to portray Big Edie if a movie based on Grey Gardens were made?  He suggested Ethel Barrymore, Drew's great-aunt, despite the fact that Ethel Barrymore had been dead since 1959.