[Ciao Manhattan, 1972] film review

[Ciao Manhattan, 1972]




by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]








Director John Palmer & David Weisman







Perhaps the most chilling account of a downfall, told in the voice of Edie Sedgwick herself, the 1972 short film "Ciao Manhattan" is a haunting prologue just before a fatal addiction would take the life of perhaps the greatest underground actress of the 60's and 70's. With accounts of a unadvised pregnancy, inhibitions from the time of losing her virginity, to hospitalization in psychiatric treatments, falling love and giving energy to what led to a mere insanity.

 Sedgwick, who derived from a prestigious family, desired to live, live the pulse of the people, the cause of the time. Her black and white portrait given in Ciao Manhattan, partial documentary, partial interview, known sieges laid to her during many of her films with Andy Warhol, notably, [Poor Little Rich Girl, ]. A beautiful girl who never knew she was beautiful, she hid herself under addiction and club dim lights and the subculture of homosexuality to feel the beauty she yearned for. Footage of her displays a woman alive during the days, radical in the nights, vague sleep and the days return in their monotonous, viral ways. Amongst her liveliness, was the haunts of the suicide of two of her brothers which gave over to Sedgwick's eventual self-destruction. Her quote about blossoming into the scene, into a "healthy young drug addict," gives the account of a woman who wasn't interested in her own self-destruction though it was the scene and she who imposed it on herself.

 Sporadically, the interviews return, followed by silent moments of her responses muted out, only her body language and lips telling the tale as that of the orient theatre. Darkness of the reel also is used to tell the tale of Sedgwick, her discussions with photographers and filmmakers reveals Edie's very versed knowledge of filmography and had she lived on, she could have made more of what her family believed was a terrifying ideal. Though she mentioned that her family would "endorse modeling 100 times over before entertaining the idea of her in films," Edie loved the Warhol idea of people buying her life in motion. There was no need for scripts, no need for ideas, nor need for scenes; Edie had grown out of what most actresses would need to appeal to the public- her life within itself was an unrehearsed script given over to the desires, the curiosities of the movement, of the public's rendering at the time. It was Warhol who gave her the true notion that if her life was interesting enough, people would go on and believe in her, that very life and continue to be influence and magnetized to her condition. That very idea came with a drastic price, an exact price that Edie would have to pay and many stars before and after her had also been in debt to.

 If the relationship with Warhol went sour, severed on bad terms, it was because Warhol took advantage of her love to make art with her life, with her body and her blossoming day's over. It was from Warhol that she grew out of as well as she did scripts (that she still felt she needed.) Warhol experimented, and as he did, Sedgwick continued to reach and grasp. Her use of drugs gave her the notion to trip out of many life and begin to live another after the binge ended its distortion. "You live alone, creating your life as you go. You only contend with two things; yourself and other people."

Sedgwick's life was a tiresome, fanciful one, living in a dream can be an exhausting plight for the dream world isn't our world- there is a cost to live there. Drugs were the channels to reach the nirvana she believe would take her from one life to the other, from one day to the next. If any fault lied in the life of Edie Sedgwick, it was her mishap of overdose, forfeiting the world of her beauty and brilliance.