The Chelsea Girls
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Chelsea Girls |
| Original title | The Chelsea Girls |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1966 |
| length | 195 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Andy Warhol |
| script | Andy Warhol, Ronald Tavel |
| production | Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey |
| music | The Velvet Underground |
| camera | Andy Warhol |
| occupation | |
Chelsea Girls is a movie of the American painter and multimedia artist Andy Warhol from the year 1966 . It is the first of his productions from the early experimental film phase to be shown in cinemas worldwide, and Warhol's first commercial success as a filmmaker .
action
The (fictional) lives of residents of the Chelsea Hotel in New York 's Chelsea district , a legendary and run-down artist dump, is shown. The “actors” are recruited from the residents, visitors and friends of the Factory , Warhol's studio in Manhattan . Only the photo model Susan Bottomly , known as "Superstar" International Velvet , Warhol's assistant Brigid Berlin and Nico lived in the hotel .
The film consists of twelve half-hour episodes (each 16 mm film roll has a running time of 32 minutes), in which one or more “residents” of Chelsea are introduced. Parallel actions can be seen on the right and left halves of the screen. It is composed as follows (based on the video / DVD version compiled by Paul Morrissey ):
- Nico in the Kitchen (b / w, right, with Nico , Eric Emerson and Ari, Nico's son with Alain Delon )
- Pope Ondine and Ingrid (b / w, left, with Ondine (actor) and Ingrid Superstar )
- Brigid holds Court (b / w, right, with Brigid Berlin and Ingrid Superstar)
- Boys in Bed (b / w, no sound, left, with Ed Hood , Patrick Fleming and Gerard Malanga )
- Hanoi Hannah (b / w, right, with Mary Woronov , Angelina "Pepper" Davis and three other women)
- Hanoi Hannah and Guests (b / w, left, actors as above)
- Mario sings two songs (b / w, right, with Ed Hood, Patrick Fleming and Mario Montez )
- Marie Menken (color, no sound, left, with Marie Menken , Gerard Malanga and Mary Woronov)
- Eric says all (color, right, with Eric Emerson )
- Color Lights On The Cast (color, no sound, left, with various superstars )
- Pope Ondine (b / w, right, with Robert Olivo and)
- Nico Crying (color, left, with Nico to the music of Velvet Underground )
Characteristic in all episodes except the first and the last is the subliminal or open violence of the actors, which is closely related to their ubiquitous drug use. Brigid gives Ingrid a high dose of amphetamine by sticking the needle through her pants. Mary wields psychological terror on her roommates and beats up Angelina, just as Ondine beats his film partner Rona after verbally beating her down and injecting himself with cocaine . The warbling transvestite Mario is chased out of the room by Ed and Patrick, Ingrid and Ondine outdone each other at mutual insults, Brigid insults their telephone partners. All of this narcissism is mercilessly captured and documented by Warhol's camera. The "dark", cryptic sides of modern life in the metropolis of New York are shown.
backgrounds
The film was shot in the summer (June to September) 1966 ; The filming locations were the hotel itself, the factory, and various apartments including the Velvet Underground apartment on West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village . Except for two scenes, all the dialogues for which Ronald Tavel wrote the script are improvised. Originally the film included a sequence with Edie Sedgwick , who broke up with Warhol shortly after filming and requested that this section be removed.
The first showing of the still unfinished film took place at the end of August 1966 in the Presidio Theater in Los Angeles , the premiere at the film-makers 'Cinematheque , Jonas Mekas ' Club for underground films in New York on September 15, 1966. In regular The film was shown in cinemas from December of that year. It was initially designed to be “open” for the performances, so that the individual film rolls could be inserted according to the taste of the presenter; only later was there a "playback schedule". In terms of film technology, the so-called split - screen technology deserves special mention : on the screen, which is divided into two or three projection surfaces, several actions take place in parallel, a revolutionary technique that was picked up three years later by the producers of the Woodstock film and was particularly popular in the 1970s.
The response to the film fluctuated between aggressive rejection and incomprehension, and most of the reviews were devastating. Performances in Boston were stormed by police and the cinema owners were convicted of distributing obscene material.
It is only in recent years that art critics have seen Warhol's tremendous aesthetic sensitivity in the composition of the pictures, the sophisticated lighting and the coloring, and have described the film as a valid work of art.
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
- Chelsea Girls in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- 2003 DVD release page
- Nico Sings Chelsea Girls in the Chelsea Hotel , film snippets from the hotel, interview excerpt with the artist Nico from 1970 and her song Chelsea Hotel on Youtube