Delayed Reaction: Salesman

Premise: A documentary about four door-to-door bible salesmen trying to make a living.

There's nothing remarkable about Salesman. It's a pretty standard documentary from a time when not as many were being made (1969). It's shot in a verité style, leaving the four salesmen to drive what's happening. I liked it though for its simplicity.

I wonder what this movie is like for people who remember door-to-door salesmen. For me, this was totally foreign: both letting a stranger into your house to sell you things and the fact that they were selling fancy bibles (often on payment plans). This also made it difficult to tell when the people they were selling to were being fake for the cameras vs. fake just because they had company. I've seen a lot of performatory salesmanship from things like Glengarry Glen Ross, so it was interesting seeing similar tactics being used on a more believable scale by these men.

The movie is perhaps too verité though. I often got lost in how mundane the dialogue was. Like, I'd be watching a scene, then I'd realize I didn't actually catch what anyone had said for the last minute. This is probably the result of some mix of undiagnosed ADHD, understandably imperfect sound mixing, and dry conversation. Regardless, I definitely missed some of the finer points of the conversations.

This is a brief movie at only a hair over 90 minutes. It's a terrific look at what it's like to be stuck in a middle-tier of the capitalist dream. It's also just a fun snapshot in time. I love some of the small things that date it; like the guy who was excited to play his orchestral version of The Beatles' "Yesterday".

Verdict: Weakly Recommend