The sad fate of actress/model Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s ‘It Girl’ of 1965, colors an appreciation of Ciao! Manhattan (1972), her last film. The anarchic narrative has a fragile, documentary-type backbone; reality ebbs and flows freely throughout twisting tales of decadence and decay. But wait…
Are we watching Edie or Susan Superstar, her character in the film? It seems we are watching both at the same time. That’s not the same as, say, watching John Malkovich in ‘Being John Malkovich’. The difference is centered on the motive force behind the film. Ciao! is an emotional, empathetic response to the life of Edie Sedgwick.
So, we have a semi-biography? Maybe. A story that has been retrofitted on a sketchy, pre-existing plot to accommodate the death of the principal actor? Possibly. A critique of Andy Warhol’s cavalier, possibly abusive treatment of the poor souls he showered with fame? It’s arguable. All of them?
Depending on your intentions, you can read it a few ways. If there’s a theme, it may have to do with the vapidity of celebrity culture, underpinned by the hazardous results of rampant drug use.
But there’s more.
Susan Superstar suffers from mental illness. We see her enduring shock treatment, among other incidents. (Edie Sedgwick had multiple stays in psychiatric wards). The obvious instability of the Superstar character adds a dark, unrelieved poignancy.
At the end of the film, we see newspaper articles announcing the death of Edie Sedgwick. Ciao! Manhattan is unique in that it shatters both the third and fourth walls at the same time.
The poet Yeats wrote: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; / the centre cannot hold’. For whatever reasons, life could not hold on to Edie Sedgwick.
However, Ciao! Manhattan is hardly an admonition or eulogy. Perhaps, after the psychedelic lights are lowered and the band goes home, it’s a guarded confession about the inevitability of actions, that they do indeed have consequences, however fatal they may be.
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