But then I watched Ciao! Manhattan <\/em>anyway. And it is fascinating<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It opens with a deceptively simple bit of on-screen text: \u201cThree months after the completion of filming, Edie Sedgwick, who portrays herself in the role of Susan, suddenly died at the age of 28. We dedicate this motion picture to her memory.\u201d If you skim it, there\u2019s nothing unusual here; actors die in the period between completion of photography and arrival in theaters all the time, and the dedication of the posthumous production is de rigeur. It\u2019s that phrasing: Sedgwick \u201cportrays herself in the role of Susan.\u201d The pieces of this phrase seem to cancel each other out; is she portraying herself, or is she playing the role of Susan? <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the film itself answers that question with, in essence, the \u201cwhy not both?\u201d meme. Edie Sedgwick is playing \u201cSusie Superstar,\u201d yes, but that is a character in a situation that is identical to herself, within the facts of her life. Sedgwick was as a key figure in Andy Warhol\u2019s Factory scene in the early 1960s, appearing in several of his films as a version\/variation\/persona of herself (most notably in Poor Little Rich Girl<\/em>). But when she attempted to established herself as an independent figure and actress, things fell apart; there were years of addiction and hospitalization, and then she returned to the West Coast in 1970. Two years later she was dead at 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The messy origins of the picture are betrayed in its storytelling. The directors, John Palmer and David Weisman, began shooting an experimental film starring Sedgwick during her mid-\u201860s Factory heyday. (Both were part of the Warhol orbit; Palmer is credited as co-director of Empire<\/em>, Warhol\u2019s notorious 485-minute film consisting of a single shot of the Empire State Building.) When she returned to California in 1970, Palmer and Weisman tossed their original script and came up with a new scenario, with Edie\u2019s \u201cSusie\u201d recovering – or, more accurately, retreating – in California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks, presumably, to the shifting tides of cinema and tastes of art film audiences, the reimagined Ciao <\/em>apes the ambling-weirdo aesthetic of Easy Rider <\/em>– it\u2019s messy, experimental, and declamatory, sometimes clumsy, but never less than compelling. The new material, shot in richly saturated color, takes an an entry point Wesley Hayes\u2019 Butch, a Texas boy who picks Susie up, hitchhiking, half-nude and barely conscious. He takes her back to her family estate, where she lives in a tent in the pool, surrounded by ephemera from her brief period of fame. \u201cI\u2019m preparing a portfolio of friends and acquaintances I knew in New York during my modeling career,\u201d she explains, which launches the film back to 1965, and back into black-and-white. (When California Susie telephones people in New York, they\u2019re still in black and white – a witty and inspired visual choice.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Palmer and Weisman capture numerous gorgeous, seemingly on-the-fly images of \u201860s New York, yet her understandably cynical perspective keeps the picture from romanticizing the time. \u201cThat whole scene was full of shit,\u201d she explains, not even angrily, just off-handedly. It certainly seems to have done a number on her, and not just based on the stark contrast in appearance; even taking out the switch from her iconic, short, white-blonde cut to her long brunette locks, she truly seems a different person (\u201cDid you really used to look like that?\u201d Butch asks, gazing on her old photos).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there\u2019s never a question of her identity, and, true to that opening text, no real separation between her and the character. \u201cNo matter where I\u2019ve been, I\u2019ve been quite notorious,\u201d she tells Butch. \u201cI\u2019ve never been anywhere where I wasn\u2019t known.\u201d The old footage of Edie and her fellow Factory kids acting out a barely-veiled version of their own zonked-out existence is accompanied by audio of interviews in 1970, not terribly lucid, certainly not making any effort to pretend that the Susie of this story and the Edie portraying her are not one and the same. More disturbingly, as she rants, dances, strips, and carries on, barely standing up, it does not feel like acting, and there\u2019s some question as to whether these filmmakers were standing by impassively as this woman self-immolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt sure is one hell of a shame to see the little gal just go downhill like this!\u201d exclaims \u201cMister Verdecchio,\u201d the powerful old \u201ctycoon\u201d and all-purpose villain of the piece, but we first see him looking like something more personal: the director in the cutting room, surveying the documented wreckage of this ingenue\u2019s life. Butch puts a more nuanced point on it: \u201cIt\u2019s just like she\u2019s inside her own lil\u2019 bitty world, all by herself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ciao! Manhattan <\/em>was all but ignored in its initial release, and neither Weisman nor Palmer would continue to work in this vein; Palmer would go back to his career as a British camera and crew guy, putting together a resume that stretched from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold<\/em> to Shaun of the Dead, <\/em>while Weisman would make his bones as a producer (he was the key player in the slice-and-dice job that led to grindhouse audiences first seeing the Lone Wolf and Cub<\/em> movies in the form of 1980\u2019s Shogun Assassin). <\/em>Now, the picture\u2019s main function is as a testament to Edie Sedgwick\u2019s incredible charisma and beauty and, yes, acting chops – not just in the scenes where she is <\/em>playing a character, but in the scenes where she\u2019s being herself, because by that time, being herself was playing a role. The picture ends with documentary footage of her real wedding. She looks so healthy and happy. And four months later, she was gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/ciao2-1024x724.webp\")
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