Customer Reviews

Ciao! Manhattan

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tragic" is a word that may become synonymous with the name of Edie Sedgwick.

The 5 stars are for Edie's smile, and nothing more.

This "Let's Start", and then "Stop", "Start again" cycle of this film presents as a messy, disorganized glance at Ms. Sedgwick's disturbing life.

Another 'tragedy " exists here. Our educated culture should recognize that if Edie weren't exceptionally beautiful, there wouldn't have been much fuss over an ancestor of a historically noted family.

Beauty still takes precedence over most other attributes.
It's been over 35 years since the death of Edie Sedgwick, but the "glam-famishished" still won't let the beauty get her rest.

The film's black and white scenes show the brilliance of Edie's past beauty, but are all cut and pasted into a confusing, tangled decoupage.

The additional color footage of the next decade is woven in carelessly. If it was just Edie's glowing wedding sequence that were included, it would've been much easier to watch.

The "two teenagers" who appear in the the colored segments seem out of time with Edie's Glory Days of the 60's.

This is NOT a spiraling Masterpiece.Not a work of art nor imagination galore.

Just commercial trash for the star struck. For other than commercial purposes, it is a film that Spotlights it's own defeat.

It is a poor tribute to Edie Sedgwick and I prefer the very big, heavy photograph book.

i knock down a star for this because of the insufferably boring scenes involving Mr. Verdeccio and his chauffeur.
take all that out and you've got your 5th star back.
but, alas, we're stuck with it.
the rest is all good.
absolutely essential are the dvd extras:the interviews with the co-director, david weisman, betsy johnson,wesley hayes and george plimpton.
absolute essential dvd extra pt. 2: the film-length commentary with david, john palmer and wesley.
absolute essential dvd extra pt.3: the found film footage unused in the film but here embellished with commentary by david and john.
i first saw Ciao Manhattan, probably at that same revival movie house another reviewer mentions having seen it....and that must have been, what, early 90's? something like that.
it was a difficult watch.
i was tortured by the character of Butch. perhaps even worse is the young dude who plays Edie's servant, Geoffrey.
the whole sub-plot involving Verdeccio and co. is a colossal test of endurance and just about ruined it all for me.
and it was an endurance as well to sit and watch a truly disabled miss Sedgewick in the color scenes shot in 1971.
she's completely surrendered to a drug-induced state of .........zonksville.
but i still wanted her to make it through. to get herself together.
and i take it back..she's not COMPLETELY surrendered to zonksville because she speaks intelligently and thoughtfully about her past.
and her past is represented in this film by many black and white filmed flashbacks shot in 1967 when this project had a different agenda.
she looks great in these flashbacks. a bit trippy but still gorgeous and fun-loving.
even in the color scenes from '71 with her hair grown out and dark again as it was before she came to new york in the early '60's, she looks young and beautiful.
one of the blessings of this dvd is to learn via the commentary that Edie was very much part of this films objective and was eager to portray herself in an unflattering light.
so, i was quite relieved to learn that the wasted and disheveld Susan who she plays in the film is very much Edie acting in that way.
i recomment this dvd along with the book "Edie Girl On Fire" and the film "Factory Girl"

Before I got Ciao! Manhattan on DVD, I had seen it twice before, once on video (first time) and once at a cinema revival screening of it (second). I was fascinated by the movie upon my first viewing, but managed to make it through the second showing just barely...my unconditional admiration for Edie Sedgwick being what got me through it. I mean, it's a weird, wacky, and wonderful film--full of great images of 1960's glamour and a funny, bizarre plot set in the 70s--but I bought the DVD really just so that I could complete my Edie memorabilia collection.
Anyway, I sat down to watch it the other night and turned on the special features first. They were fantastic! The interviews with David Weisman and Betsey Johnson were incredible; both of these people communicate very well the spirit of the 1960's and what they were experiencing and trying to communicate during the making of the film, not just in terms of the actual production but the way life itself was for these "youthquakers" back then. Weisman also gives some great insight as to why, after all these years, people (and young people in particular) are still so fascinated with Edie and the Warhol crew. And then there's the extra footage, which, despite having no soundtrack, is absolutely mesmerizing. Shots of 1960's kids, New York, Woodstock (I think), and of course outtakes from the film...well, it was just a fantastic bonus. Watching the features first really made me appreciate the film the most I ever had when I saw it the third time...this is a DVD not to be missed (well, admittedly, for a certain audience with an interest in the 1960s).

The two Edie Sedgwicks in this shambling sprawl of a film tell me everything I need to know about what happens when you repeatedly apply hard drugs to a young mind. Not good.
Eyelash Edie of the Factory days in the mid 60s was a jangly amphetamine doll, and implant Edie of barely three years later, after she had been ousted from the silver clouds and sent packing back to SoCal...ouch. She looked like a bobble head version of herself.
I read Edie: An American Biography when it came out in hardcover in 1982 before I had seen Ciao, and the book devoted several pages on the production, so I kind of knew what to expect, but of course to see the players in action...sigh. The original movie teaser promised "Speed. Madness. Flying Saucers." That's about right.
Lasting images: Ms. Berlin injecting speed in the toilet stall, screaming and blowsy...Edie plumped out, vacant and trying to dance...Paul America in New York driving a car out of a scene and (knowing this from reading Edie) he just kept on driving to California, stoned out of his mind...
For me, maybe the the last scene in the film is the most moving, where the young man sees Edie's obit in the newspaper and flinches away in sadness and embarrassment--
The lady might be dead but her influence floats on...
Also...
http://www.nypress.com/15/14/books/books.cfm

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.

I remember finding this film fascinating upon its first viewing by me, years ago in New York. I was much younger then, and at that age, ones early demise always seems so glamorous. Now that I am older and wiser, I found this film, upon a recent re-viewing, only depressing and tragic. Though it is a supposed fictional tale about a former star of the "in-crowd", it is for all purposes a docu-bio of its star, Edie Sedgwick. Edie was , for 15 minutes, Andy Warhol's brightest star. He was enamored of her beauty, patrician family roots, and moneyed glamour, she of his very name, and his offer to turn her into an instant superstar. Their collaboration was brief, and she burned out. Though she grew up in the most privileged of families, there was a horrid hidden life of incest, suicides, and betrayals. Her drug use became one long suicide attempt, until the inevitible event finally occured in 1971. This film is an almost obscene documentation of her demise. Though presented in a fictional setting, it's not very hard to see where Edie's character of "Susan" ends, and the real identity of Edie herself begins. Indeed, the flashback scenes are actual clips of Edie herself, mostly in her Warhol years. But as the film progresses, we see the real Edie has turned into a monster, she literally seems to be mutating,, and it is sad to observe. Though beautiful, death is painted on her face, and her hesitent and incoherent ramblings are too real. Ultimately, one is very aware of the feeling of exploitation of a very troubled, damaged human being. That she died not long after its filming will surprise no one. This film, though not a Warhol production, is filmed in the grainy style of his notorious underground films, resplendently amateurish. Though hauntingly presented and scored, it is ultimately a tragic record of wasted life, and very depressing. The creative energy spent by certain parties since her death was an attempt to take a short-cut to the legendary status of a Marilyn Monroe, but this has not happened. Edie has become just a sad footnote to a bygone time, and her handfull of movies, most of which have never and will never be seen by the mainstream, they were not worth the price she paid, though she was arguably doomed long before their making. I would recommend this film only as a fascinating one time view for those who are interested in that crazy time and The Warhol crowd, but anyone other than that will only be bored, perplexed, or saddened by this tale of poor, lost Edie.

Ciao!Manhattan is avant garde to say the least! Filmed over five years by filmmakers David Wiseman and John Palmer, Ciao! does its best to blur the lines between the ficitonal Susan ("portrayed" by Edie Sedgwick) and the reality of Edie's real life. Shot in both color and black and white, the plot is hopelessly besotted in drugs and conspiracy. Try as they might, the filmmakers could not pull a story together that made any kind of sense. Nonetheless, the DVD is loaded with special features that make it a worthwhile investment. Included are interviews, a still gallery of rarely seen photos of Edie and lost outtake footage with great voiceover commentary from filmmaker David Wiseman. Another feature worth a try is the director's commentary. The stories accompanying the movie itself is eyeopening and educational, to say the least. This movie is a must have for anyone intrested in the 1960s/early 70s underground movie making experience.

I ordered this item because I love and adore Edie Sedgwick. Yet I found the little bio of her rather dull and lengthy. It was not as exciting as I would have imagined her life to be. Still it is worth the time of getting a glimpse at her charm.

First things first, this movie makes NO sense whatsoever. If you can ignore that little tidbit, you can make it through this movie with no problem. Having a backstory to this movie (how it was made and why it seems to span years...it does!) will also help in understanding it. Basically Ms Sedgwick started filming this flick when she was on her 16th minute of her 15 minutes of fame. After disappearing from New York (where filming started) due to drug abuse, the filmmakers tried to salvage footage and shoot around their star in hopes of finishing the "first aboveground underground film". According to the filmakers (who do a wonderful job of commentary on this dvd), they found Edie about three years later in California still drugged out and fried from shock treatments. Going against conventional logic, they began filming again but, this time with a new cast (notably Roger Vadim) and a new storyline (using that word loosely). Not wanting to waste the black and white footage shot of Edie and other Warhol Superstars some years earlier, they intergrated black and white footage with color footage shot with rehabing Edie. The story isn't suppose to be "The Edie Sedgwick Story" but it's based on her life and her constant obession with pills, her modeling days and herself. One might wonder why any self respecting person would put all the disgusting elements of their lives out there for the world to consume and willingly act them out as if they had no idea it was their life. The plotline is besotted with conspiarcy theories of aliens, flying saucers and (of course) drugs. The whole point of this movie is suppose to be that a drifter played by some dude with the worst Southern accent since Viven Leigh in "A Streetcar Named Desire", drifts into Susan's (Edie) life not knowing how much Edie's "very public freakout in the 1960s" has influenced his own devil may care attitude about life. Again, unless you know the backstory, none of this would be apparent. This film is basically Edie's slow death. The scenes that play out are erriely foretelling of Edie's tragic demise. Even though you know that Edie didn't stick around, you still hope that she'll clean up her act before the end of the movie. Sadly, she never does. She died during post production and the filmmakers tacked on an ending (I'm guessing she didn't die in the original ending) to tie up loose ends of a life that wasn't never tied in the first place. The finally flashback scene of Edie's actual wedding to a fellow rehab patient is shown followed by her real obit in the New York Post. A sad ending to a sad story.

This film is interesting only to anyone familiar with the saga of Edie Sedgwick. And it seems a bit ghoulish/voyeuristic to admit watching it for that reason. Although it's often claimed to be a biography of Edie, the film really is just a painful look at a person in the final stages of mental illness-drug addiction. She died soon after filming completed, which is no surprise.

The plot of Ciao is pretty garbled by the storyline involving the character Mr. Vedecchio. The director's commentary explains that Vedecchio was only added to the movie because during shooting the rest of the cast disappeared and there was nothing else to do but beef-up this role. In fact, the whole movie is a cut-and-paste of pre-meltdown Edie (black and white footage) and post-meltdown Edie (color), with Vedecchio and Paul America tossed into the mix. The color section also introduces Butch, the drifter from Texas, who does provide some much-needed comedy.

Although Ciao, Manhattan might not be particularly entertaining on its own, the DVD extras in the Anniversary package are wonderful, and to me made the disc worth purchasing. The directors' (and Butch!) commentary provides the story of how this movie "directed itself", and informs much about Edie and her state of mind during the last days of her life. There is quite a bit of extra footage from the Warhol-NYC days, and some terrific stills of Edie. A nice booklet is also included.