Grey Gardens
The wreckage left by Gatsbyesque frivolity is plumbed to desperate depths in Albert and David Maysles’s 1975 documentary, about a formerly wealthy mother and daughter, erstwhile luminaries of the society pages, living in squalid chaos in their once glorious East Hampton estate. Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (born in 1895), called Big Edie, was Jackie Onassis’s aunt; her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale, Little Edie (born in 1917), was Onassis’s cousin. Before the filming started, Onassis came to their rescue, getting their pest-infested, garbage-filled home cleaned up to save it from condemnation by the health authorities, but the Maysleses catch the Beales on the downturn again. Performing flamboyantly for the filmmakers and hungrily seeking their approval, mother and daughter spill their lifelong recriminations over circumstances that led to their isolation, poverty, and folie à deux. The pathos is heightened by Big Edie’s bedridden singing of classic show tunes: she’s a graceful master of timing and tone, a nearly great artist who squandered her chances and her life. Little Edie, still clinging to vestiges of youth and inflamed with desire, nearly raves for David Maysles as she performs majorette routines from her junior-college days. Rarely have high spirits and theatrical energy seemed like such a tragic waste; an era and its myths seem to be dying on-screen in real time. Directed by the Maysles brothers, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer. (Film Forum; March 6-12)