Salesman
US, 1969, 35mm, black & white, 90 min.
After participating in the famed creative crew that produced experimental television at Time, Inc. in the 1960s (along with Robert Drew, Ricky Leacock, and D.A. Pennebaker), Al Maysles, his brother David, and their partner Charlotte Zwerin set out on their own to make Salesman, which covers six weeks in the life of four traveling bible salesmen. Eschewing the European vérité style of direct engagement with often sensational subjects, the Maysles’s unobtrusive camera follows the four men—the Badger, the Bull, the Gipper, and the Rabbit—through their snowy door-to-door walks in New England and phone calls to wives back home. The resulting work, which the directors called a "nonfiction dramatic feature," concentrates on drawing meaning from the quotidian aspects of the human condition as it forges insight into a peculiarly American mixture of faith and commerce.