Ciao Manhattan (Ws Dol)

Starring:Paul America, Charlie Bacis, Nell Bassett, Brigid Berlin, Jeff Briggs, Tom Flye, Allen Ginsberg, Pat Hartley, Wesley Hayes, Baby Jane Holzer, Isabel Jewell, Gabriel Lampa, Jean Margouleff, Christian Marquand, Wesley Rand, Edie Sedgwick, Roger Vadim, Viva
Director: John Palmer (II)
Studio: Plexifilm
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Fact and fiction collide in the cult classic Ciao! Manhattan, which was billed as "the film that wrote itself." The unexpectedly poignant tale is based on the life of "Superstar" Edie Sedgwick, who plays a drugged-out former model named Susan. In Southern California, she lives in her wealthy, pie-obsessed mother's swimming pool and recounts her glory days in Manhattan to a Houston drifter (Wesley Hayes). John Palmer and David Weisman began filming in New York in 1967 and kept shooting for the next five years, even as Sedgwick moved West, grew out her hair, got breast implants, and spent time at a variety of mental institutes. The 1970s present is in color; the 1960s flashbacks are in luminous black and white. John Phillips, Richie Havens, and others provide the period-perfect soundtrack. Confusing at times, but always entertaining, Ciao! Manhattan is a must for fans of Head, Trash, and all things weird, wiggy, and Warhol. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Description

Ciao! Manhattan parallels Andy Warhol Factory star Edie Sedgwick's glory days in the late 60's through her inevitable downfall and the tragic addiction that would take her life only weeks after filming wrapped in 1971. The DVD includes never-before-seen bonus footage of Edie, interviews, a photo gallery of Edie's life, and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Ciao Manhattan.......2007-02-22

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"

Poorly extended 60's film project.......2007-01-10

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.

Ciao Manhattan DVD.......2007-01-09

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.

Celluloid heroes never really die.......2006-09-13

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

100 viewings ain't enough !.......2005-07-05

This no doubt is a strange film. If the theme of Zappa's 200 Motels was that touring can make you crazy, this film is definitely the flipside... DRUGS can make you crazy, ruin your career, put you in a nuthouse and inevitably kill you..... here we are in the flip side of the psychadelic 60's... the methadonic and dexatronic 70's... but the psychadelic daze pervails...

The director described Ciao as an OVERGROUND UNDERGROUND FILM... meaning that it is framed into a story with an actual plot and chractors and doesn't last 12 hours... In fact some of the dialogue and images in this film make it more of a cult classic (with its repeatable lines and dialogues) than a true "underground" film in which case it might have had statements to make, but wouldn't have necessarily been entertaining or rewatchable. Whatever, despite its flaws and the fact that at one point it was becoming the neverending film for the director and production crew as Edie and crew went AWOL for months, weeks days and years on end, it turned out great... it fact the film is so well edited and strung together you don't really realize that it was patch paste and capture scenes as you go until after you're told so... then admittedly it becomes quite obvoius.. -- Made over a 5 year period... you can really feel the colorful 70s when its the 70s and the mod (yet black and white) 60s when its the 60s... and everything blends together... In many ways the film reminds me of Zappa's 200 MOTELS... by the time its over you might feel as drugged out and dazed as many of the charactors, yet the charactors are so memorabe and the story so bizarre you watch it over and over again...

Despite the obvoius bad taste left in some Edie Sedgwick fans who realize that this film in many ways is a documentary of her fall and final days and might even arguably exploit it, on a level of entertainment and engagement this film is one of the all time most memorable... with the cartoonish "Dr. Roberts" sequences being a particular delight to cult movie fans... (*anybody remember the time when Junkie doctors like that were actually common ???)

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Rites of Passage

Jazz Channel Presents Bobby Womack

Spider Baby

DVD: High School Confidential!

Six Million Dollar Man, The - Vol. 1: Cyborg / Wine, Women A