Ciao Manhattan

Court. Director John Palmer, David Weisman; Producer Robert Margouleff, David Weisman; Screenplay John Palmer, David Weisman; Camera John Palmer, Kjell Rostad; Editor Robert Farren; Music Gino Piserchio

Edie Sedgwick
Wesley Hayes
Isabel Jewell
Paul America
Geoffrey Briggs
Tom Flye

Ciao Manhattan is Edie Sedgwick's filmed swansong - she died of acute barbituate intoxication in 1971. Monotonous and nearly incomprehensible, Ciao consists chiefly of pieced-together short ends from two Sedgwick vehicles, one [in b&w] begun with great fanfare by undergrounder Chuck Wein [from a story by him and Genevieve Charbin] in 1967 when the Andy Warhol 'superstar' was at the peak of her celebrity, and the second started three years later in California by John Palmer and David Weisman, who evidently believed they could reconstruct the ruin.

In the last years of her life, says this intendedly anti-dope film, Sedgwick took up residence at the bottom of a tented Santa Barbara pool, narcissistically surrounded by giant blowups of herself. It is here that the film dwells, cruelly exploiting her dope and booze bloated visage, her siliconed breasts (for at least half the pic she is topless, so proud is she of these new ornaments) and most of the non-plot consists of her drug-zonked recollections of her halcyon days.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1973. Running time: 90 MIN.

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