Visitor rating
The door-to-door salesman was once a very common, highly visible profession. Completely replaced over the last few decades by the television advertising, home shopping TV channels, and the Internet, these modern-day carpetbaggers would travel from city to city, using any tactic necessary to sell their current stock in trade. "Salesman" is a fascinating record of a group of four men who work in this precarious and lonely profession. As they make the rounds in Massachusetts and Florida, we are witness to the aggressive and sometimes morally questionable tactics they employ to sell an expensive, enormous, and gaudy edition of the Bible. The group members are all featured but the primary focus is Paul Brennan, a once-able salesman whose defeatist attitude has started him down a slippery slope to failure and despair. The directors (highly acclaimed as masters of the documentary form) allow the events to unfold naturally without ever relying on interviews or voice-over narration. Their work is tightly edited and well-photographed. A true-life "Glengarry Glenn Ross," "Salesman" manages to be both humorous and tragic.
Criterion Collection, 210 E. 52nd St., 578 Broadway, New York, NY 10022, Phone: (212)212756-8822, Toll-free: 800-446-2001, URL: http://www.criterionco.com, Remarks: Does not sell directly to consumers
Available on DVD
Running time 91 minutes.
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