Ciao! Manhattan

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Movie
German title Ciao! Manhattan
Original title Ciao! Manhattan
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1972
length 84 minutes
Rod
Director John Palmer
David Weisman
script John Palmer
David Weisman
production Robert Margouleff
David Weisman
music Gino Piserchio
John Phillips
Richie Havens
Kim Milford
Skip Battin
Kim Fowley
camera John Palmer
Kjell Rostad
cut Robert Farren
occupation

Ciao! Manhattan is a semi- documentary film that tells of the life and decay of the Susan superstar aka Edie Sedgwick , a New York style icon of the 1960s from Andy Warhol's entourage . The fragmentary biopic turned into a cinematic epitaph shortly after the completion of the shooting because of the drug death of the leading actress (1971) .

action

The film portrays the young, obviously shabby Susan Superstar (Sedgwick), who lives in an empty, tent-covered swimming pool in California and ponders her life. Film posters and large-format star portraits (including Andy Warhol) on the pool walls bear witness to her previous life as a star. In flashbacks, the film accompanies the young woman through her calm and empty life in Manhattan , stimulated by amphetamines . Underlayed by tape interviews, colored game scenes in California alternate with black and white film clips that show Susan's / Edie's wild party life in Andy Warhol's factory ; while she chats in the colored swimming pool sequences, euphorically delirious in the drug frenzy, about people she once met, such as Viva, Brigid Berlin or Allen Ginsberg .

The film depicts the gradual disintegration of Sedgwick's alter ego Susan and thus also the self-destruction process of the real Edie as a discarded, dying superstar from the factory ensemble. As the voice from the off , Susan / Edie blames Warhol, among others, for their extreme drug use.

background

Edie Sedgwick was a "party girl " from a wealthy family, a so-called "Girl of the Year" - a forerunner of today's It-Girls - who graced the covers of numerous glamor and film magazines in the 1960s. Sedgwick was mentally unstable and a drug addict . After brief successes as a model and muse accompanied by Pop Art artist Andy Warhol, her career ended in the late 1960s in an odyssey through drug rehab centers and mental hospitals.

In the spring of 1967 directors John Palmer and David Weisman began filming Ciao! Manhattan . The film team also included other protagonists from the Warhol Factory environment, such as Genevieve Charbin, Bob Margouleff, Gino Piserchio and Chuck Wein, as well as numerous, partly uncredited actors in supporting roles. A kind of documentation of the New York youth counterculture was intended .

"The film was intended as an experiment that eventually turned into an odyssey," said David Weisman, looking back on the work. The production was to prove to be as lengthy as it was chaotic: Edie Sedgwick was not actually intended as the main character, the film was originally supposed to be about Susan Bottomly (International Velvet), the current "Girl of the Year 1967" . But because Bottomly was only 17 years old at the time, so her father did not give permission, she was removed from the script and only the name Susan was retained. The role was eventually cast with Edie Sedgwick, whose short-lived modeling and acting career was drawing to a close at this point.

Filming came to a standstill between 1968 and 1969, on the one hand because the main actors suddenly and apparently disappeared from the set without a trace: the drug addict Sedgwick stayed in constantly changing rehab and mental health institutions and Paul America was imprisoned for drug possession, and on the other hand gave up there are always problems with the budget because the sponsors of the film, Bob Margouleff's parents, lost confidence in the film project (and their son). The result was mostly incoherent footage with an equally incomplete plot. Palmer and Weisman recognized that the film would remain an eternal fragment, but saw a certain charm in it, as it reflected the unstable character of the protagonist.

Weisman finally managed to find Edie in the fall of 1970 at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara . With the permission of your attending physician Dr. Mercer agreed - although clearly weakened by drug use. “She looked fantastic” remembered Weisman. However, the actress had become a breast augmentation subjected, which are explained in the film had to, as the old black and white photographs of New York showed a narrow-chested, rather boyish Edie and Susan in the swimming pool now topless acted with full breasts. The shooting took place under the constant supervision of Edie's doctor, who also delayed the shooting. One of the highlights of the film is Susan / Edie undergoing shock therapy . “It was a completely fictional idea and Edie felt strong enough to direct the scene. But Dr. Mercer was against it, ”recalled John Palmer. The scene was shot anyway, and Edie gave it haunted authenticity by adding her own experience of such treatment.

The final shooting in the swimming pool took place in the winter of 1970 in Los Angeles . "It was the coldest winter in California in a long time, yet Edie insisted on being naked most of the time just to show off her breast implants," said Palmer. Edie was under the influence of Pentothal , a strong sleeping pill, most of the time and could only articulate incoherently, if at all. For the final sentence in her last film role “Oh, God. That's what I hate about California. They roll up the fucking sidewalks… ”it took her hours.

The film went into post-production in early 1971 . Edie died of a barbiturate overdose less than a year after filming ended . The film is dedicated to her and ends with newspaper reports telling of her death.

In Germany the film was in February 1972 at the International Film Festival in Berlin presented. In the USA the film was released on April 19, 1973, in West Germany a year later, on July 18, 1974. In German cinemas, the film was shown at times under the alternative title Addio! Manhattan .

Reviews

  • Roger Greenspun wrote in the New York Times : “In the end, Ciao! Manhattan a cruel exploitation, although the film is dedicated to Miss Sedgwick's memory, it is a humiliation. "
  • Variety : “ Ciao! Manhattan is Edie Sedgwick's filmed swan song - monotonous and almost incomprehensible. "
  • Jonas Mekas in The Village Voice : "The Citizen Kane of the drug generation."
  • Todd Konrad in Independent Film Quarterly Magazine : "Essentially evidence of the rise and fall of the naive spirit of the 1960s, the film developed a fundamental response that is valued far more today than when it was first released."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ciao! Manhattan. warholstars.org, accessed August 12, 2008 .
  2. ↑ Jean Stein: Edie: American Girl . Grove Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-8021-3410-6 , pp. 388ff.
  3. ↑ Stein: Edie: American Girl , p. 393
  4. ↑ Stein: Edie: American Girl , p. 396
  5. ^ The New York Times, April 20, 1973
  6. ↑ Ciao! Manhattan Review. (No longer available online.) Variety, formerly in the original ; Retrieved December 13, 2008 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com  
  7. ↑ Ciao! Manhattan. (No longer available online.) Plexifilm archived from the original on October 6, 2009 ; Retrieved December 13, 2008 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.plexifilm.com
  8. ↑ Todd Konrad: Ciao! Manhattan. Independent Film Quarterly Magazine, archived from the original on August 16, 2007 ; Retrieved December 13, 2008 .