Salesman

(There are a lot of classic and influential films that I have not seen, that well, I probably should see. So over the next few months, I'm planning on watching some that I've always been meaning to see, and jotting down my thoughts about them here at Camerastilo.com. The following is the first of these posts.)

In a time when I was a bit more naive, not all that long ago, I remember watching Luis Bunuel's Land Without Bread and thinking about how fortuitous it was that the filmmakers were there to capture a goat falling off of a cliff. It didn't occur to me, at that time that the scene might have been staged. After all, wasn't Land Without Bread a documentary?

Well, I do know better now. I try to watch all documentaries with a more critical eye than I did a Land Without Bread.

Take Saleman for instance. Many beleive that this film about traveling bible salesmen, photography by Albert Maysles and edited by his brother David Mayles and Charlotte Zwerin in 1969, is a masterpiece of the form. Yet, a close look at the film reveals that the filmmakers took certain liberties with chronology and assembled the film's images and sounds in ways that seem to contradict what Cinema Verite - a "movement" that the filmmakers were associated with that endorsed presenting its subjects as close to reality as possible - was all about.

While watching Salesman, the first thing I noticed was the hotel rooms. So many seemed so similar. Eventually, I realized that they weren't different hotel rooms at all, despite the fact that the filmmakers led me to believe otherwise.


Above: Paul walks by as The Bull watches a boxing match in their room at the "Yankee Drummer Inn" about 18 minutes into the film Salesman.

At 18 minutes into the film, there is a shot of a sign that reads "Yankee Drummer Inn". The next shot is of two of the salesmen, the focus of the film Paul and Ray also known as "The Bull" in a hotel room. During the sequence The Bull watches a boxing match on TV. The room has a TV mounted on a cinder block wall and a sink in the back.

During this sequence, it's interesting to pay attention to what's happening in the film's audio track. Not only does the announcer on the television boxing match have the good sense to talk only when Paul and The Bull are not talking, but Paul's tossing of a cigarette pack onto the cradenza - also the end of the shot - is neatly punctuated by a bell marking the end of the round.


Another angle: Paul and Bull in the hotel room in question, also about 18 minutes into Salesman.

After a scene with the film's two other featured salesmen, The Rabbit and The Gipper, at 24 minutes we are back with Paul and The Bull having an extended conversation in the same hotel room as before. At 26 minutes there is a short, three sentence exchange between the two. At the end of the exchange The Bull says to Paul, "I'll tell you one thing Paul, you're putting me in a very negative frame of mind for the sales meeting in Chicago." During this three sentence exchange about the sales meeting in Chicago, the viewer never clearly sees the mouth of either Paul or The Bull.


26 minutes into the film Paul and The Bull talk about the sales meeting in Chicago. During the exchange, neither Paul nor The Bull's mouth are visible.

So, it's off to the Chicago sales meeting, where at 33 minutes the salesmen's boss tells them, "Tommorrow we're going to Florida..." We then see Paul driving in a convertable down palmtree lined streets. At 35 minutes Paul is in a hotel room with The Rabbit and The Bull that looks like a mirror image of the room that first appeared 18 minutes in to the film. Paul phones home and says that he's staying "...outside of Miami, it's the Congress Inn...".

The Bull, The Rabbit and Paul at the Congress Inn.

After which, at 41 minutes, we see Paul and The Bull in what is obviously the same hotel room they were in 18 minutes into the film, same layout, the same sink and mirror at the back of the room and the same art on the wall.


Paul and Bull's hotel room in "Florida" at 41 minutes in to the film has the same art work as their room in the "Yankee Drummer Inn" in the snowy north.

Then again, at the very end, one hour and 28 minutes from the start of the film, as Paul packs his bags at the end of the film we are in the very same hotel room as we were 18 minutes into the film, with the same TV mounted on the same cinderblock wall.


Paul packs his bags at the end of the film.

So, why do I bring this all up? I'm not the type of person that scrutinizes DVDs for continuity errors; in fact I find much of that stuff annoying. I bring it up to gain some incite into what the filmmakers were doing: they were simply organizing the footage that they had into the most compelling story.

As editor Charlotte Zertwin says on the DVDs commentary track:

"That's what you're looking for. How does that fit into the story. Not knowing when you're first looking at the rushes what is the story. You know. You have to find that along the way. In a picture like this, nothing is ever really out until the thing is finished. Until the last moment of editing and in the mix you might change something. Something that seemed unimportant to you, suddenly, all of a sudden, oh that's it, that's what's missing right there."

Once the filmmakers determined it was Paul's story they wanted to tell, they organized the footage they had to best serve that purpose, regardless of actual chronology. Yet, in order for a story to make sense to its viewers, there needs to be structure, and one way to give a story a structure is to create a chronology that makes sense to the the viewer.

So, the filmmakers created a chronology that best suited the story they wanted to tell. Placing a shot with the sign to the Yankee Drummer in before showing Paul and The Bull in their hotel room leads the viewer to believe that they are in the Yankee Drummer Inn somewhere in New England, instead of the Congress Inn in Miami Beach. Having dialog where Paul and The Bull speak of the sales meeting in Chicago, right before the film moves to the sequence in Chicago helps create a structure for the viewer, even if that verbal exchange may not have happened at the moment shown on screen. And having the bell in the boxing match on television coincide with Paul's tossing of the cigarettes right before the cut suggests to the viewer that Paul is in a battle, much like the boxers on TV. And besides that, it's just a really cool way of ending a shot.

-Eric