Kitchen (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Kitchen |
| Original title | Kitchen |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1965 |
| length | 70 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Andy Warhol |
| script | Ronald Tavel |
| production | Andy Warhol |
| camera | Andy Warhol |
| occupation | |
Kitchen is a 1965 experimental film directed by Andy Warhol based on a script by Ronald Tavel . Edie Sedgwick plays the leading role . The 70-minute sound film was on 16 mm - Black and White Material rotated. The premiere took place on March 3, 1966 at the Film Makers' Cinematheque in New York .
action
The camera shows an empty, white kitchen with a kitchen table from the medium long shot. Then there is a sneeze from off , followed by a woman's voice (Sedgwick) announcing the film: “Reel one of Andy Warhol's Kitchen. Starring Edie Sedgwick as Jo and Roger Trudeau as Mickey, special assistance Buddy Wirtschafter, scenario by Ronald Tavel, directed by Andy Warhol. “Two more sneezes follow. Then Sedgwick lists the kitchen inventory: "A kitchen table and chair ... a sink ... a trash can [sneezing] ... a blender ..."
Finally, she describes the rest of the inventory, which remains hidden from the viewer: “One wall in the kitchen is tiled and there is a calendar on the wall that is not actually a calendar, but a copy of the script. Then there are various objects on the table and another copy of the script is hidden in between. There's a big book on the table or two or three books and copies of the script are hidden in the books. If the performers forget their lines [sneezing] they can pretend to be reading one of the books or they can go to the calendar on the wall and read until they find their place and if they want they can check the date tear off."
Now Edie comes into the kitchen, wearing a striped T-shirt. She carries a bag with her. She opens the bag, takes out a makeup mirror, and sets it on the table. René Ricard enters the scene and begins washing dishes in the sink, most of the time with his back to the viewer. When Edie starts putting on her makeup, a photographer (David McCabe) walks in, takes a picture of her, and walks out of the picture. Then Edie has a hangover and with a perplexed expression on his face, awaits directing from the off. Now Roger Trudeau comes in, kisses Edie on the neck, sneezes, sits down at the kitchen table and looks just as perplexed as Edie. To give Edie a cue, Trudeau suddenly says "trash can". Edie asks what he said and he repeats. Then she says, "My darling, I know you said trash can , but what should I do with it?" Trudeau replies, "Rummage around in it ..." so Edie goes to the trash can and takes out a few items of clothing and puts them down for a moment the table and then toss them back in the trash can. In between, she sneezes several times.
The film obviously continues without a director. At some point Sedgwick lies on the table doing gymnastic exercises with his legs. Trudeau tells Edie that he had sex in the shower with someone that afternoon, to which Edie replies, "How nice ..."
Then Trudeau suggests going to the beach that night, "when it's dark and nobody is around ..." Edie cuts him off: "You know how much the sand hurts?" At another point in the film, Edie gives pretend she was Trudeau's mother and gave him a beating. When Trudeau begins to give a monologue about second-hand clothes, Edie gets up and turns on the blender, which drowns out the rest of the text by the roar.
The second reel of film begins with a look at the set and the cast who are getting ready; Edie studies the script and puts it near the stove in case she needs it. A male voice (presumably Donald Lyons) sounds from the off: "Reel 2 of Andy Warhol's Kitchen starring Edie Sedgwick", then he announces the other actors, as well as the "technical assistant" Gerard Malanga. The film now contains stage directions.
The mixer, which runs right at the beginning, is switched off at some point, and Edie says, "Thank god the sound of that hideous machine is over." Donald Lyons comes into the kitchen with a mattress, accompanied by Electrah. As if she were relieved that someone has come to talk to, Edie literally beams. When Edie asks him if Lyons would like a coffee, he replies: “I like my coffee sweet and black, like my men,” and Trudeau hooks, “so, you like your men so black…” Donald replies: “white, green, purple ... I'll tell you something about fabulous Mexican ... "
As she offers the other cast members a layered cake, Edie spills the coffee on the table, whereupon Donald remarks, “It's like the story of my life - one meaningless layer after another.” Edie starts to cry and says, “That's it! I don't have my own shift. "Trudeau tries to cheer her up by telling her that she is a really attractive girl, to which Edie replies," Attractive! How can a girl with two heads be attractive? "Donald says," my dear, your two heads are very attractive, "whereupon she pushes Donald off his chair and yells at Electrah," Do you like sleeping with cripples? "
Chewing gum and fidgeting, Electrah climbs into a monologue about what Trudeau and Edie are up to "in the dark" and addressed to Edie: "He's doing dirty things between your legs." Edie and Donald ignore them with a clear silence, finally Edie interrupts Electrah's monologue with the words: "Could someone turn on the blender?" And to Donald: "What the hell is she talking about?"
Towards the end the film becomes more and more directionless, finally Edie burns his hand on the stove and they discuss whether to put butter or salt on the burn. When the actors believe that they will no longer be filmed, they no longer make any effort to act, finally Gerard Malanga wanders through the picture, gets a soft drink from the refrigerator and the film ends.
Reviews
The most extensive review is from Norman Mailer :
“I think Warhol's films are historical documents. In a hundred years you will look at Kitchen and see the incredibly narrow set that was actually a kitchen, it may be eight feet wide, maybe it was only six feet. It was photographed from a medium long shot and looked narrower [...] You can't see anything except the kitchen table, the refrigerator, the stove and the actors. The refrigerator hummed and boomed on the soundtrack. Edie had this cold. She had a terrible cold. She had one of those colds that you get in unheated apartments in winter. The dialogue was dull and bounced off the tiles and plastic surfaces. Watching that was a horror. It essentially captured the deadliest boring day ever in a city, at a time when everything was streaked with the smell of damp washcloths and old drains. I'm afraid that in a hundred years, people will look at Kitchen and say, 'Yeah, that's how it was in America in the late fifties and early sixties. That's why they had this war in Vietnam. That is why the rivers became polluted. Therefore there was a typological glut. That was when the horror came down. When the plague was on its way. ' Kitchen shows this better than any other work from the time. "
background
Andy Warhol wanted to make a film that would "make it big" for his new discovery Edie Sedgwick as a factory superstar and spoke to writer Ronald Tavel about a suitable and simple script. “Something in a kitchen. White and clean and everything made of plastic, ”says Warhol. Tavel asked if he would like a plot, to which Warhol replied: "I want a situation."
Tavel went one step further and not only renounced the plot, but gave all roles that appeared in the scenario the same name. So the actors inevitably had to get confused, because nobody knew which text passage was intended for whom.
Kitchen was shot in the kitchen of the New York attic apartment in late May / early June 1965 by Bud Wirtschafter, a film technician who worked on early Warhol productions. “The filming was chaotic,” recalled Tavel, “the film was sabotaged by Edie's companion and self-proclaimed manager Chuck Wein because he wanted to write and direct the script himself. Chuck told Edie that it was 'old-fashioned' to learn lyrics and that she should just run in front of the camera and improvise and say whatever she wants. Chuck also made sure that Edie was so full of alcohol and drugs during filming that she was unable to execute the script. ”So it was that Edie announced on the day of the shoot that she had no idea what it was all about. Tavel replied that it was about "nothing", to which Edie complained, what the point of telling her that it was "about nothing". Finally, Tavel agreed with her that she should just sneeze when she doesn't know what to do next. So the sneeze became a certain running gag of the film.
The film premiered on March 3, 1966 at the New York Film Makers' Cinematheque . In West Germany, Kitchen was first broadcast on June 1, 1971 in the Hessian television program.
literature
- Enno Patalas (ed.): Andy Warhol and his films: A documentary . Heyne, Munich 1971, ISBN 0-200-41991-9 .
- Stephen Koch: Stargazer. The Life, World and Films of Andy Warhol . London 1974; Updated reissue by Marion Boyars, New York 2002, ISBN 0-7145-2920-6 .
- Bernard Blistène (Ed.): Andy Warhol, Cinema: à l'occasion de l'Exposition Andy Warhol Rétrospective (21 juin - 10 septembre 1990) organized à Paris par le Musée National d'Art Moderne au Center Georges Pompidou . Ed. du Center Georges Pompidou, Paris 1990, ISBN 2-908393-30-1 .
- Debra Miller: Billy Name: Stills from the Warhol films . Prestel, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7913-1367-3 .
- Astrid Johanna Ofner (Ed.): Andy Warhol - Filmmaker. A retrospective of the Viennale and the Austrian Film Museum October 1 to 31, 2005 . Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85266-282-6 .
Web links
- Kitchen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Kitchen at warholstars.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gary Comenas: Andy Warhol: Kitchen (1965). warholstars.org, accessed December 20, 2008 .
- ↑ Jean Stein : Edie: American Girl . Grove Press, 1982, p. 234
- ^ Victor Bockris: Andy Warhol . Claassen, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-546-41393-8 , pp. 242-243
- ^ David Bourdon: Warhol . DuMont, Cologne 1989, p. 206
- ^ Kitchen. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 12, 2017 .