GREY GARDENS. (1975) DIRECTED BY ALBERT AND DAVID MAYSLES, ELLEN HOVDE AND MUFFIE MEYER. STARRING EDITH EWING BOUVIER BEALE AND EDITH BOUVIER BEALE. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I'm not really sure what to say about this extraordinary documentary film. It left me nearly speechless when I watched it, and I can assure you that that's something that doesn't happen every day. I watched it totally 'blind,' as I call it, by which I mean I didn't have a clue what it was about beforehand.
It's not a subject I knew anything about either, but I found it both fascinating and oddly repellent at the same time. Let me see if I can gather up all the threads and weave them into something resembling a cohesive whole. The things I do for you guys! It must be love...
Okay, so here we go. Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith Bouvier Beale were the aunt and cousin respectively of America's former First Lady, style icon Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Grey Gardens was their home at the time the documentary was filmed by two brothers who'd initially been planning to make a film about Jackie O's and her sister Lee's childhood in East Hampton.
At the time of filming, the two Edies, known as 'Big Edie' and 'Little Edie,' had been living in Grey Gardens for more than fifty years. Big Edie had moved into the 28-room mansion in East Hampton with her lawyer/financier hubby Phelan in 1923. It took its name from the colour of the cement garden walls, the nearby sand dunes and the mist rolling in off the Atlantic Ocean.
The house is surrounded by lavish gardens. Big Edie stayed on at Grey Gardens after her husband left her. From what I saw of the gorgeous old ramshackle house and grounds, if it were mine I would never want to leave it either.
In the early '70s, however, the eccentric Beale ladies hit the news in a bad way when it was revealed that the house was filled from top to bottom with garbage, fleas and human waste. Cats and raccoons had the run of the place which was deemed to be a health hazard by the local council.
The Edies were ordered to clean it up. Jackie Onassis and her then hubby Aristotle forked out big-time for the place to be cleaned. No fewer than one thousand garbage bags were removed from the property. A new furnace and plumbing system were also installed. God only knows how the two occupants of the house had been living prior to these improvements.
When we meet eighty-year-old Big Edie and her fifty-six-year-old daughter Little Edie, they're still living alone together in Grey Gardens. The place has been cleaned out, but it still doesn't exactly gleam like a new pin. The two formerly rich and glamorous socialites are living mostly in one room out of the mansion's twenty-eight.
Their diet is poor, they never go out (except to the nearby beach, but that's only Little Edie) and they spend all day cooped up together squabbling like children, harking back to their glory days or singing snatches of old songs. Big Edie fancies herself as a singer and Little Edie as a dancer. Little Edie certainly still has the legs for it.
Little Edie's still quite glamorous in the film, despite the fact that she's lost her hair either to alopecia or a self-inflicted disaster, depending on which version you believe, and her head is wrapped in a succession of headscarves, sweaters and what look like a pair of old leggings.
Both Edies have great bone structure and old photos and portraits reveal them to have been in their respective youths two of the most gorgeous women you've ever seen. Now, however, they've buried their appeal under layers of bizarre, incorrectly-buttoned clothing and they let bits of sagging old liver-spotted flesh hang out inappropriately.
Momma hardly ever leaves her bed, which is filthy and covered with newspapers to absorb the cat-shit. It's sad beyond belief to see these two intelligent, well-spoken, well-educated formerly wealthy women living in such squalor and poverty.
This documentary's been voted the 9th Best Documentary Of All Time. There's no doubt that it's an excellent piece of film-making, but it feels intrusive at times as well. It feels like the camera has no business laying the lives of these two eccentric-to-the-point-of-batty old women bare to the
viewing public for the public to laugh and sneer at them and call 'em crazy. Some people watching this film would consider the Edies to be two mentally ill women who need treatment.
Their lives seem so sad and yet one wonders to what extent they actually chose this lifestyle. Big Edie feared losing permanent legal access to her home and so she stayed home deliberately. Little Edie also chose, in her way, to live with her mother so that she didn't spend her whole life worrying about her from somewhere else. Maybe sometimes that's easier...!
Yet, Little Edie in particular had obvious regrets; men she felt her mum prevented her from marrying and her lost career as a cabaret performer to name the two main ones. I think it's the daughter I felt most sorry for while watching this film. She said herself that cats and raccoons are great company but sometimes, just maybe, a woman needs a little more.
Watch out for Little Edie feeding the family of raccoons in the attic and also a paranoid Little Edie wondering who's been 'moving' her books around from floor to floor, even though the only other occupant of the house is her bedridden mother. Watch out too for Big Edie cooking corn-on-the-cob in her filthy and unsanitary bed and offering some to Jerry the handyman. He must've been really hungry to eat that corn...!
This film is out on Blu-Ray right now courtesy of THE CRITERION COLLECTION. The extra features actually include the 2006 follow-up movie called THE BEALES OF GREY GARDENS, which would have been painstakingly constructed from hours of extra footage from the film-makers' archives. I personally can't wait to watch this sequel. GREY GARDENS is an uncomfortable film to watch at times, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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