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Albert Maysles was a documentary producer, director, and primarily a cinematographer, who (along with his late brother David) did considerable work in television. But some of his work did make it to the big screen.
In 1965, Maysles was one of five cinematographers who photographed the compilation film SIX IN PARIS, in which six French New Wave directors contributed segments. Maysles worked with Jean-Luc Godard on the segment "Montparnasse-Levallois."
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In 1969, the Maysles' first feature-length documentary received a theatrical release. It was SALESMAN, which recorded the experiences of four door-to-door salesmen for the Mid-American Bible Company. This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1992.
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Albert Maysles was one of over a dozen photographers who shot the seminal rock concert film MONTEREY POP. Shot in 16mm, this 1969 release from director D.A. Pennebaker was a record of the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival.
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Albert and David Maysles met Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale, Jr., in 1972 while making a documentary about sisters Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill. The project was abandoned and the Maysles brothers decided to make a film about the Beale branch of the Bouvier family. Principle photography took place over five weeks during the autumn of 1973. Co-director Muffie Meyer told the Village Voice that “there were times that [the elder] Edie appeared much crueler and more dominating than she does now, but we wanted to make them more equal, which we think is the reality of the situation.” An 1998 interview with the younger Beale revealed that the women had no money, and the Maysles brothers were supplying them with groceries while photography was in progress.
The resulting film, GREY GARDENS, opened theatrically at the Paris Theatre in New York City on 20 February 1976. Reviews for the film were predominantly positive. However, several, both positive and negative, stated that the film could be construed as exploitative and cruel in its portrayal of the Beales. But in an article in the 2 March 1977 edition of Newsweek, Edie Beale defended the Maysleses: “I just wanted to show myself off as an entertainer…what they did was right.” GREY GARDENS was selected by the Library of Congress to be entered in the National Film Registry in 2010.
Turner Classic Movies will be running GREY GARDENS on Sunday, March 8th, at 10 AM ET.
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1977's RUNNING FENCE was one of several films that the Maysles did on the artist Christo and his wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude. The film was a celebration of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's vision; first a four-year struggle, then 24 1/2 miles of white nylon fabric, rising from the Pacific and stretching like a white sail across California. The film was first shown on PBS.
RUNNING FENCE devotes much of its time to the planning process: the meetings with government officials and individual ranchers, the wildly disparate reactions the project provokes in the communities it is to affect. This might seem like mere logistical detail, incidental to the Christos' capital-a Art, but as Christo tells the zoning board, it is, in fact, integral. "The work is not the fabric, the steel poles and the fence," he says. "The art project is right now, here." Albert Maysles said that the Christos produce "art that's connected with life."
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Albert Maysles was one of five photographers that shot footage for what eventually became the 1996 film WHEN WE WERE KINGS. The film was a documentary of the 1974 heavyweight championship bout in Zaire between champion George Foreman and underdog challenger Muhammad Ali. Though almost all filming by producer/director Leon Gast occurred in 1974, it took 22 years to complete the film, primarily because the negative and rights to the film were entangled in civil suits involving the Liberians who financed the movie's making.
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In 1996, Albert Maysles shot and co-directed the HBO documentary LETTING GO: A HOSPICE JOURNEY. Exploring this almost taboo subject through the stories of three hospice patients, the film creates an understanding of the hospice movement -- physical, emotional and spiritual assistance to terminally ill people and their families.
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