Grey Gardens

BFI Film Classics

by Matthew Tinkcom

Grey Gardens (1975) is one of most important documentary films of the past thirty years, gaining the status of a cult classic. Matthew Tinkcom argues that the film reshaped documentary cinema by moving the non-fiction camera to the heart of the household, a private space into which film-makers had seldom previously ventured.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Biography

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2011

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.

Reviews

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The BFI: Grey Gardens (2011) edition written by Matthew Tinkcom was insightful in providing the context in which the film was made. There are three sections that follow the Introduction: 1. 'We Belong Together': Melodrama as Non-Fiction in Grey Gardens, 2. 'The Revolutionary Costume': Little Eddie and Fashion, and 3. 'If you can't get a man to propose to you, you might as well be dead!': Direct Cinema and the Problem of Seduction. This is followed by the Conclusion: 'I'm pulverized by this latest thing': Grey Gardens and its Lives. I was surprised to learn that there was a HBO fictionalized version of the film as well as a theater production of the story as well. Tinkcom provides context and support for the revolutionary film.

[David Sterritt]

Matthew Tinkcom’s study of David and Al Maysles’s minor classic “Grey Gardens” is a reasonably well-written entry in the BFI Film Classics series, categorizing the film as a sort of nonfiction melodrama and discussing such pertinent issues as its direct-cinema aesthetic, its disruption of the notorious male gaze, its status as a feminist statement, and its impact on the fashion world; the 2025 edition adds a further note on the Beale women as gay icons and inspirations for drag performers. Recommended for those interested in the Maysles brother and one of their best-known films.

[Casey Hubbard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favorite of the BFI series I’ve read so far. It helps that I’m obsessed with this documentary too.

[Sarah Nocquet · Rating 5 out of 5]

surprisingly captivating and insightful, a lot to think about in regards to the process of filmmaking in general, creation of characters etc, love the bit with freud’s theories about daughters seeking vengeance on their mothers by punishing them with proof of their infidelity in their marriage

**second read to annotate
so much in this book is great fodder for storytelling

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little too "scholarly". Read like an affected thesis.

[Kara Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a term paper. Interesting points and perspectives. Glad I read it.