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Wow! Such a good movie.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I purchased this DVD as it's part of the Criterion Collection and I own several Criterion's. I have never found a film on the Criterion Collection to be 'boring', but this one takes the biscuit. I have tried twice to watch this film and both times I have nearly fallen asleep. This is hands down the most BORING film I have ever seen in my life. A bunch of old men sit around smoking and talking about a whole bunch of nothing for an hour and a half. Just who would find this interesting? I can only think this may be worthwhile to someone who has been a salesman themselves before. But this film does nothing to show us the advantages and disadvantages of their profession. It doesn't even show anything interesting about the persona of each salesman. There is literally nothing here except old men knocking on doors, sitting down for a smoke and a boring chat, and then knocking on doors again. I have seen A LOT of films and never have i ever experienced anything as slow and boring and uninteresting as this.

This is a great documentary by two of the greatest filmmakers in that genre. If you want the premise, the title says it all, yet there is so much substance to this documentary that at the same time, the title tells you very little.I could say that this movie is about greater topics such as work, or morality or character, but one of the best things about the Maysles style is that these decisions are left up to the viewer. So, yes, it's basically about door-to-door bible salesman, but the rest is for you to see.Commonly in modern documentaries (ie. Moore) the filmmaker quite literally filters the story and tells you what to think by narrating it, or even worse putting themselves in the movie. But the Maysles document the subject, without contaminating it. And this is a prime example of that style. Highly recommend it.

A 1969 documentary about a group of salesman selling bibles to the masses. It's probably most interesting because you see how people lived and worked 40 years ago. The salesmen themselves are interesting but so are the people they meet. Of course they use every trick in their book to sell their bibles ("Did I tell you I'm an Irish catholic?"). Very interesting to see how these men worked in a job which is now very much gone. Alone on the road they share their misery and failings with their fellow salesmen who yawn and offer some half-hearted advice.Salesman is a real version Glengary Glen Ross 25 years before that movie was made. What we have here is a time capsule of 1969. The decorations in the homes, the clothing, the cars, the way they talk, it's all pretty dated by today's standards. But it's interesting to see how people lived in 1969.

Every time I see a documentary I wonder about the editing process - the choice of what we were *allowed* to see, and the order in which we are permitted to see it. I have the same feeling with "Salesman", but in this case it's what we get to hear. At times it seems like the audio has beenpost-recorded, rather than what was spoken on the spot. It may have had something to do with the sound recording equipment that they were using, but some dialogue clearly does not have the same acoustic quality as other piece of dialogue in the same scene. While most of the dialogue is influenced by the environments in which the participants speak (home, on the road, motel room), some dialogue sounds like it was produced in a neutral environment, like a studio.Point in case is when Paul is dissecting the day in his motel room with his roommate (19 minutes in). Paul steps into the bathroom and his speaking continues. However, given that he was most likely going to the bathroom to relieve himself, we get a dialogue free of bathroom noise, and one that was most likely re-recorded at another time in another location (this might have been so that people's 1969 sensibilities weren't offended). Now, this is clearly a manipulation of reality, which distracts from the 'real' nature of documentary - and, of course, documentaries are what the documentarians allow us to see/hear. This is not intended to devalue the movie for me , but it does serve as a reminder that documentaries are not as 'real' as many believe them to be.In any respect, I'd love to know what became of these guys. I watched a version of Salesman without any such information. Does anybody know?