Grey Gardens

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by Matthew Tinkcom

Type: Studies
Subject: One Film > Grey Gardens
Keywords: Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, documentary
Publishing date: 2025 (September 18, 2025) (Upcoming)
Publisher: BFI Publishing
Collection: BFI Film Classics
1st publishing: 2011
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 96 pages
5 ¼ x 7 ½ inches (13.5 x 19 cm)

ISBN

978-1-83902-929-5

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Book Presentation:
The Maysles brothers' documentary film Grey Gardens (1975) chronicles the everyday lives of two eccentric upper-class women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her mother Edith. The film has gained the status of cult classic since its release, inspiring both a Broadway musical and a 2009 feature film. In this first single volume study, Matthew Tinkcom argues that Grey Gardens reshaped documentary cinema by moving the camera to the heart of the household, a private space into which film-makers had seldom previously ventured.

By the time the film-makers appeared on their front porch, Grey Gardens' two central figures, 'Big Edie' and her daughter 'Little Edie', had been living for two decades in squalor in their beachside East Hampton mansion. However, the women were hardly victims of their poverty; rather they saw themselves as artists who were willing to make any sacrifice for their singing and dancing talents. When the Edies perform for the camera, audiences are challenged by the question of how much anyone would be willing to give up in order to lead a life of eccentric pleasure. Tinkcom argues that Grey Gardens is innovative in blending documentary with the conventions of melodrama, and that the film's appeal lies in the fabric of the Beales' everyday lives in which they argue, dress up, flirt, laugh, sing, dance and reminisce about their experiences in New York's social elite in the first half of the twentieth century.

In his afterword to this new edition, Matthew Tinkcom reconsiders Grey Gardens fifty years after its release, addressing its cult status and the Edies' continuing influence on popular culture.

About the Author:
Matthew Tinkcom is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Technology and Affiliate Faculty of English at Georgetown University, USA. He is the author of Working Like a Homosexual: Camp: Capital, Cinema and Grey Gardens, co-editor of Key Frames: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies as well as articles that have appeared in Cinema Journal, South Atlantic Quarterly and collections from Duke University Press and the British Film Institute. He has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and Director of the Program in American Studies.

See the publisher website: BFI Publishing

See Grey Gardens (1975) on IMDB ...

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