Cinema: Slumming Expedition

GREY GARDENS

Directed by DAVID MAYSLES, ALBERT MAYSLES, ELLEN HOVDE and MUFFIE MEYER

It seems farfetched, but this is a documentary. Grey Gardens, a new cinema vérité creation of the Maysles brothers (Gimme Shelter, Salesman), concerns the dilapidated lives of Edith Beale, 79, and her daughter Edie, 56. Both women live in East Hampton, Long Island, performing some dizzy charade out of The Madwoman of Chaillot. Grey Gardens, the crumbling house they inhabit, is overrun by raccoons, squirrels and other woodland creatures. The two women live mostly in one room, where the beds .are covered with cans of cat food, the...

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