Salesman (Criterion Collection)

This radically influential portrait of American dreams and disillusionment from Direct Cinema pioneers David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin captures, with indelible humanity, the worlds of four dogged door-to-door Bible salesmen as they travel from Boston to Florida on a seemingly futile quest to sell luxury editions of the Good Book to working-class Catholics. A vivid evocation of midcentury malaise rendered against a succession of cheap motels, smoky diners, and suburban living rooms, Salesman assumes poignant dimensions as it uncovers the way it's subjects' fast-talking bravado masks frustration, disappointment, and despair. Revolutionizing the art of nonfiction storytelling with it's nonjudgmental, observational style, this landmark documentary is one of the most penetrating films ever made about how deeply embedded consumerism is in America's sense of it's own values.