Grey Gardens

Director: Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Muffie Meyer

1975 / 94min / DCP

“I only care about three things: the Catholic Church, swimming, and dancing.” So goes the gospel according to Edith “Little Edie” Beale, who in the 1970s, together with her brow-beating elderly mother, Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier lived in the hermetic squalor of a dilapidated East Hamptons manor, a place overrun with ghosts in the attic (well, actually, raccoons) and unhappy memories. The Edies’ encounter with filmmakers Al and David Maysles resulted in this iconic verité double portrait. Staunch characters of the first order, and offbeat fashion icons, the Edies are perhaps imminently quotable subjects in documentary history, yet behind their clamorous laughter lies a quietly wrenching story of mutually destructive mother-daughter codependency.

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of All the Single Mothers!