Blu-ray Review: Spend New Year’s with the Beales of ‘Grey Gardens’

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Average: 5 (1 vote)

Do you think Albert and David Maysles knew they were creating not just a documentary but launching cultural icons when they filmed the mesmerizing “Grey Gardens,” now available in a Criterion Blu-ray edition? The film about “Little Edie” and “Big Edie,” relatives of American royalty in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, became a cult phenomenon, inspiring a follow-up (which is included in this release), an award-winning fictionalized version of their story with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, and even a full-length musical.

HollywoodChicago.com Blu-ray rating: 4.5/5.0
Rating: 4.5/5.0

What is it about the Beales that fascinates us? It is a special kind of crazy that can be embraced this thoroughly and Little Edie & Big Edie were certainly unique characters, two self-obsessed socialites living in a dilapidated mansion in the Hamptons. Their lives, as brilliantly captured in “Grey Gardens” seemed so unique and so perfectly Hollywood and yet tragic at the same time. The genius of the Maysles was not to intrude, allowing their two subjects to be the characters they were in real life without too much manipulation by the filmmakers. The result is a film that’s incredibly influential not just in the people that it introduced to pop culture but in how it reshaped what we expect from a documentary. “Grey Gardens” is a window into a world we would never otherwise see. And we haven’t been able to look away since.

Grey Gardens was released on Blu-ray on December 10, 2013
Grey Gardens was released on Blu-ray on December 10, 2013
Photo credit: Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

Synopsis:
Meet Big and Little Edie Beale: mother and daughter, high-society dropouts, and reclusive cousins of Jackie Onassis. The two manage to thrive together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampton, New York, mansion, making for an eerily ramshackle echo of the American Camelot. An impossibly intimate portrait, this 1976 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, co-directed by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, quickly became a cult classic and established Little Eddie as a fashion icon and philosopher queen. This special edition also features the 2006 follow-up to the film, The Beales of Grey Gardens, constructed from hours of extra footage in the filmmakers’ vaults.

Special Features:
o “The Beales of Grey Gardens”
o Audio Commentary For Grey Gardens, Featuring Maysles, Co-directors Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyes, and Associate Producer Susan Froemke
o Introduction To The Beales Of Grey Gardens By Maysles
o Audio Excerpts From a 1976 Interview With Little Edie Beale
o Interviews With Fashion Designers Todd Oldham and John Bartlett On The Continuing Influence Of Grey Gardens
o Behind The Scenes Photographs
o Trailers
o An Essay By Critic Hilton Als

“Grey Gardens” was released on Criterion Blu-ray on December 10, 2013.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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