Addio! Manhattan

The thing I really love about the D.V.D. revolution of the last few years is that some of the strangest and most obscure movies are now readily available. No longer do you have to spend hours searching through the racks in out of the way video stores or resort to fourth generation bootleg copies. 'Ciao Manhattan' is a case in point. I'd been curious about this movie ever since reading Jean Stein's brilliant Edie Sedgwick bio 'Edie' back in the 1980s, and now here it is! The 30th Anniversary edition, with excellent picture commentary and deleted footage. The only people who seem more excited about seeing it again than me are the directors (John Palmer and David Weisman) themselves going by the chatty and informative commentary track they have made with 'Ciao Manhattan' co-star Wesley Hayes. For those who don't know Edie was "The Face of 1965", a beautiful socialite turned model and Warhol "superstar". At one point in the 1960s quite possible the coolest girl in the world. Very shortly thereafter she was almost forgotten, and died aged 28 after a drug overdose. 'Ciao Manhattan' is made up of black and white footage shot in 1967 originally intended for a never finished movie that almost accidentally starred Edie, and later colour footage filmed in an attempt to salvage the project. In the final version Edie plays a character called Susan, a former model and underground film star who has retreated to her mother's home for "treatment". She's a mess - has permanent brain damage and a drinking problem. Hayes plays Butch a young Texan drifter who picks Susan up while she is hitchhiking half naked down the highway. He returns her home and Susan's mother (Isabel Jewell) hires him to babysit her troubled daughter. The movie cuts between "now" and then, colour and black and white, documentary footage and paranoid sci fi fantasy. It's quite a trip! Anybody interested in Andy Warhol or The Velvet Underground will want to see this very strange, but watchable mess. Neither Warhol or The Velvets actually appear mind you, but Warhol scenesters like Paul America, Baby Jane Holzer, Brigid Berlin (Brigid Polk) and Viva do, as do Beat legend Allen Ginsberg (as himself, mostly naked) and 'Barbarella' director Roger Vadim (clothed, as Susan's doctor). If you watch the outtakes you also get to see Robert and Nena Thurman. Yes, Uma's folks. 'Ciao Manhattan' may not thrill everyone but for me it's essential viewing for anyone interested in 1960s pop culture, especially Warhol's Factory, which subsequently influenced almost every underground pop movement thereafter from punk on down.

As Edie's biography here on IMDb says, she was in and out of institutions. It is clear that this woman-child was taken advantage of very callously by Andy Warhol and others, at first for her money, and later for her celebrity.

Ciao! Manhattan shocked and angered me when I first saw it in 1972, because I had known Edie. For several months in 1962, when she was in a very tony, low-security psychiatric institution in Westchester, I knew her as a sweet-natured, somewhat reticent, and very artistic 19-year-old. When I first met her I thought she was a 12-year-old child, as I was, for she was so thin and under-developed looking for her age. Seeing the way she is abused in Ciao! Manhattan just leaves me feeling very sad for her. She deserved better than this exploitation film.

As for the "Summer of Love" reference made by an earlier reviewer on IMDb, referring to the fact that this film was actually made partly in 1967, I do not think Ciao, Manhattan represents any of the genuine feelings of free expression and loving attitudes that were touted at the time. There is far too much cynicism inherent in this film to connect it in any way to the hippie happiness one could experience in pleasanter circles than that inhabited/created by the ghastly, selfish, mean-spirited, and self-involved Warhol. He used and threw away such gentle souls as Edie. I weep for the lost and under-appreciated life she led while under the influence of Warhol. In kinder company, she might have survived and been happier.

Ciao, Edie! You deserved better.

This movie had a DVD release about 20 years ago and I highly recommend viewing this movie with the audio commentary because then it becomes a documentary about Edie Sedgwick. Without that commentary, you have a quasi drama(with a little sci fi) movie based around a fictionalized version of Edie Sedgwick. This character is burned out from the same setting but is living in an empty pool with a palace of pies owner for a mother. She recounts her life while showing off early breast implants much of the time. That's when the movie shifts to black and white archival footage. There's a rich and powerful shadowy figure stalking her. We never really know why. She has a love interest named America. Cant remember if that was Captain or Mr. A Jesus looking type character is the rich guy's henchman. The movie tries to be alot of things. Whatever plots they were trying to develop never really get resolved.

What we learn in the audio commentary is what the footage actually means regarding Edie Sedgwick. Roger Vadim has a role as a doctor because his mother was deeply enamored with Edie Sedgwick and wanted to be near her. Some footage from a gathering in '68 is significant because it shows Edie falling apart and this happened around the time she abandoned Andy Warhol for Bob Dylan. A betrayal Warhol never overcame.

Also they explain how much input Edie herself offers in the making of the film which is apparently alot including the filming of a real electroshock therapy session which she insisted be done.

We learn about other people always around Andy's Factory like Brigid Polk and other models. We also get more explanation of the story they were trying to tell.

I'd give this an 8 with audio commentary by the directors David Weissman and John Palmer and costar Wesley Hayes and a 6 without it. On its own, its just showing footage with a vague story tying it all together. I can see how so many viewers find the movie appalling given the fact that Edie died weeks after much of the later footage was shot but as they said in the commentary, making this movie kept her going. This was something she wanted to make and when it was just about finished, she was gone.

I've seen this video a couple of times, and I've seen parts of it many times and it always gets my attention. There's something oddly hip about it, even today. Maybe it's living in an empty swimming pool or just wasting the days sleeping that appeals to me, or maybe it's seeing a topless girl with a nice body seem entirely unglamorous, or is it just the kooky narration?... but there's a fresh insanity about this that makes it worth watching. I don't know, but anyway, I dig it .

Ciao! Manhattan is an avant-garde film that makes the films of Jean-Luc Godard seem conventional. That's not to attack Godard, mind you. I'm just comparing the two to express how far out Ciao! Manhattan is. The slight narrative concerns a young Texan hippie traveling the American countryside just because he likes to see things. One night, he sees something quite unexpected: a beautiful young woman with bare breasts hitchhiking. He picks her up (who wouldn't?) and finds that she has a couple of dog tags around her neck with her name, Susan, and address on them. He takes her home. Susan's mother thanks him and offers him a job taking care of her daughter. Susan was a young model in New York, a discovery of artist Andy Warhol. She lived a life of hard partying, and is now paying for it with a severe case of brain damage. Now Susan lives in a drained pool in her mother's back yard, and she spends endless hours drinking hard liquor and rattling off stories about the old days in New York.

At first, Ciao! Manhattan just seemed to me an excessively playful experimental film with a bunch of bizarre imagery and editing and stuff. I was laughing, it was fun to see the excesses of that sub-culture which I know so little about. But after a while, the film just started working, and really well. Susan is played by Edie Sedgwick, who really was a protege model of Andy Warhol. The film works a fine balance between reality and fiction. How much of Sedgwick are we seeing? Is any of it fictional. She died three months before the film was released, and, edited into the last moments of the film, there is a shot of a newspaper headline that announces the death. Whether Ciao! Manhattan was meant to be or not, it serves as a dirge, not only to Edie Sedgwick, but to the young generation of the time.

I don't know, maybe I loved this film because I grew to adulthood so far after the hippie generation, but I'll tell you one thing: I have seen a ton of the greatest films ever made. It's a rare experience to come upon one that is as unique as this one. Perhaps there were a thousand films like this at the time, but none are available except this. Well, I choose to praise this. 10/10.