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Grey Gardens

It's not often that documentary subjects themselves become stars -- much less two older women.

But when documentary pioneers the Mayles Brothers ("Gimme Shelter") followed around Edith Bouvier and Edith Bouvier Beale -- relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- at the site of their decrepit, nearly-condemned Hamptons mansion, the result was a genre classic and the creation of the unlikeliest of icons.

The two women -- known as Big Edie and Little Edie -- both had designs on show-business careers, which makes "Grey Gardens" perhaps the only documentary in which people spontaneously burst into song and dance. Big Edie had been a singer, and Little Edie made a show-biz career for herself not long after the film came out. But mostly, the women talk about their glamorous pasts, misquote poems like Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," and argue -- to hilarious effect.

A bizarre but memorable slice of the 1970s, "Grey Gardens" is a must-see for would-be auteurs or anyone else who fell asleep during "March of the Penguins."

Written by: Ellen Wernecke

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