''Chelsea Girls'' is a 1966 American
experimental underground film directed by
Andy Warhol and
Paul Morrissey. The film was Warhol's first major commercial success after a long line of
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
art film
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primaril ...
s (both feature-length and short). It was shot at the
Hotel Chelsea and other locations in New York City, and follows the lives of several of the young women living there, and stars many of
Warhol's superstars. The film is presented in a
split screen, accompanied by alternating soundtracks attached to each scene and an alternation between black-and-white and color photography. The original cut runs at just over three hours long.
The film was the inspiration for star
Nico's 1967 debut album, ''
Chelsea Girl'', which featured a ballad-like track titled "
Chelsea Girls", which was written about the hotel and its inhabitants. The girl in the poster is
Clare Shenstone, at the age of 16, an aspiring artist later influenced by
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
. With its creativity and eroticism, the poster captures the sensual essence of the film, and was designed for its London release by graphic artist Alan Aldridge. Warhol was extremely happy with the design, and commented that he "wished the movie was as good as the poster". The poster was used as the cover art for
Felt's 1984 album ''
The Splendour of Fear''.
Production
According to scriptwriter
Ronald Tavel, Warhol first brought up the idea for the film in the back room of
Max's Kansas City, Warhol's favorite nightspot, during the summer of 1966. In
Ric Burns' documentary film ''Andy Warhol'', Tavel recollected that Warhol took a napkin and drew a line down the middle and wrote 'B' and 'W' on opposite sides of the line; he then showed it to Tavel, explaining "I want to make a movie that is a long movie, that is all black on one side and all white on the other." Warhol was referring to both the visual concept of the film, as well as the content of the scenes presented.
The film was shot in the summer and early autumn of 1996 in various rooms and locations inside the Hotel Chelsea, though contrary to the film's title, only poet
René Ricard actually lived there at the time.
[Leve, Ariel 'New York Storeys' ''The Sunday Times Magazine'', 25 March 2007, pp. 40–51. p. 49] Filming also took place at Warhol's studio
The Factory. Appearing in the film were many of Warhol's regulars, including
Nico,
Brigid Berlin,
Gerard Malanga,
Mary Woronov as Hanoi Hannah, Ingrid Superstar,
International Velvet and
Eric Emerson. According to Burns' documentary, Warhol and his companions completed an average of one 33-minute segment per week.
Once principal photography wrapped, Warhol and co-director
Paul Morrissey selected the 12 most striking vignettes they had filmed and then projected them side by side to create a visual juxtaposition of both contrasting images and divergent content (the so-called "white" or light and innocent aspects of life against the "black" or darker, more disturbing aspects.) As a result, the 6.5 hour running time was essentially cut in half, to 3 hours and 15 minutes. However, part of Warhol's concept for the film was that it would be unlike watching a regular movie because the two projectors could never achieve exact synchronization from viewing to viewing; therefore, despite specific instructions of where individual sequences would be played during the running time, each viewing of the film would, in essence, be an entirely different experience.
Several of the sequences have gone on to attain a
cult status, most notably the "Pope" sequence, featuring avant-garde actor and poet Robert Olivo, or Ondine as he called himself, as well as a segment featuring
Mary Woronov titled "Hanoi Hannah," one of two portions of the film scripted specifically by Tavel.
Notably missing is a sequence Warhol shot with his most popular superstar
Edie Sedgwick which, according to Morrissey, Warhol excised from the final film at the insistence of Sedgwick, who claimed she was under contract to
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's manager
Albert Grossman at the time the film was made. Sedgwick's footage was used in the Warhol film ''Afternoon''.
Cast
The cast of the film is largely made up of persons playing themselves, and are credited as follows:
*
Brigid Berlin as herself (The Duchess)
*
Nico as herself
*
Ondine as himself (Pope)
* Ingrid Superstar as herself
* Randy Bourscheidt as himself
* Angelina 'Pepper' Davis as herself
* Christian Aaron Boulogne as himself
*
Mary Woronov as Hanoi Hannah
* Ed Hood as himself
* Ronna as herself
*
International Velvet as herself
* Rona Page as herself
*
Rene Ricard as himself
*
Dorothy Dean as herself
* Patrick Fleming as himself
*
Eric Emerson as himself
* Donald Lyons as himself
*
Gerard Malanga as Son
*
Marie Menken as Mother
* Arthur Loeb as himself
*
Mario Montez as Transvestite
Critical reception
Although the film garnered the most commercial success of Warhol's films, reaction to it was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 50%, based on reviews from 10 critics. In the UK, it was refused a theatrical certificate in 1967 by the
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of f ...
.
Roger Ebert reviewed the film in June 1967, and had a negative response to it, granting it one star out of four. In his review of the film, he stated, "what we have here is 3½ hours of split-screen improvisation poorly photographed, hardly edited at all, employing perversion and sensation like chili sauce to disguise the aroma of the meal. Warhol has nothing to say and no technique to say it with. He simply wants to make movies, and he does: hours and hours of them." ''Variety'' wrote that the film was "a pointless, excruciatingly dull three-and-a-half hours spent in the company of Andy Warhol's friends."
Kenneth Baker of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' reviewed the film in honor of its screening in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2002, and gave the film a positive review, stating "The tyranny of the camera is the oppression ''The Chelsea Girls'' records and imposes. No wonder it still seems radical, despite all we have seen onscreen and off since 1966." Jonathan Rosenbaum also gave the film a positive review, stating that "the results are often spellbinding; the juxtaposition of two film images at once gives the spectator an unusual amount of freedom in what to concentrate on and what to make of these variously whacked-out performers." ''TV Guide'' reviewed the film in December 2006, granting it four stars, calling it "fascinating, provocative, and hilarious" and "a film whose importance as a 1960s cultural statement outweighs any intrinsic value it may have as a film."
Availability
Home media
''Chelsea Girls'' is largely unavailable for home video format. The film belongs to the Andy Warhol Foundation, and it, along with Warhol's other films (apart from a handful of his ''
Screen Tests'', which have since been released on DVD) have never seen home video releases in the United States. In Europe, however, a handful of Warhol's films were released on DVD, including a short-lived DVD print of ''Chelsea Girls'' which was available in Italy for some time. This Italian DVD print, which is the film's only official home video release, was released on September 16, 2003.
Museum screenings
While the film is unavailable for personal purchase, it is often screened at art museums, and has been shown at
The Museum of Modern Art (which owns a rare print of the film reels) as well as
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The film was screened in San Francisco for the first time in nearly 20 years at
Castro Theatre in April 2002. Screenings were held in 2010 at the
Seattle Art Museum and at the Varsity Theater in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2011 at the
High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (2 ...
in Atlanta, Georgia, and the
Block Museum of Art
The Block Museum of Art is a free public art museum located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The Block Museum was established in 1980 when Chicago art collectors Mary (daughter of Albert Lasker) and Leigh B. Block ( ...
in Evanston, Illinois in 2016. The full 3 1/2 hour version of the film was screened at the
Brooklyn Museum in a custom built theatre within their edition of the ''Andy Warhol: Revelation'' exhibit from November 19, 2021 to June 19, 2022.
See also
*
Andy Warhol filmography
*
Hotel Chelsea
*
Reality films Reality film or reality movie describes a genre of films that have resulted from reality television, such as '' The Real Cancun'', MTV's film version of ''The Real World'', which was originally titled ''Spring Break: The Reality Movie''. In an art ...
*
Arthouse cinema
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primaril ...
*
Eileen Myles
References
External links
*
*
Andy Warhol's Magic Trick: The Disappearing 16mm Projector, 2014,
Chicago Film Society
Nico Sings Chelsea Girls in the Chelsea Hotel 1970, YouTube
{{Paul Morrissey
1966 films
Films directed by Andy Warhol
Films directed by Paul Morrissey
American black-and-white films
Films set in New York City
Multi-screen film
Women in New York City
1960s English-language films
1960s American films