CHELSEA GIRLS A-
USA (210 mi) 1966 d: Andy Warhol
co-director: Paul Morrissey
If anybody wants to
know what those summer days of ‘66 were like in New York for us, all I can say
is go see Chelsea Girls. I’ve never seen it without feeling in the pit of my
stomach that I was right back there all over again. It may have looked like a
horror show … to some outside people, but to us it was more like a comfort –
after all, we were a group of people who understood each other’s problems.
—Andy Warhol
CHELSEA GIRLS (1966) is the first underground film to be
shown in commercial theaters, opening the doors to other underground films, costing
only $1500 to make, yet grossing over half a million dollars in just the first
two years, though officials ruled against screening the film at Cannes. It was a hit in New York City, critically
acclaimed in Los Angeles and San Francisco, while banned in Chicago and
Boston. Easily Warhol’s most famous
film, Newsweek described it as “The Iliad of the Underground,”
introducing to the world a myriad of weird and eccentric characters from
Warhol’s Factory
of stars, lacking any formal narrative, following various residents of the
Chelsea Hotel in New York City, shown on a split screen, presented side by side
from two projectors, an effect also used in his earlier short OUTER AND INNER
SPACE (1966), with one starting about 5-minutes before the next screen, moving
the audio sound from one side to the other, seemingly at random, while the
other plays out in silence. Directed,
co-written (with Ronald Tavel), produced, and filmed by Warhol, the film is
presented in 12 unedited reels running about 30-minutes in length, feeling more
like a documentary, where it stands today as a remarkable time capsule of the
60’s, featuring original music by the end from the Velvet Underground that
sounds like a rare live performance.
Warhol was a remarkably prolific filmmaker, making more than 100 movies,
and 472 film portraits, mostly two to four-minute uninterrupted shots that he
called Screen Tests of artists,
celebrities, guests, friends, or anyone that he thought had “star potential,”
usually slowing the film speed considerably when projecting them, ultimately withdrawing
all his films from circulation in the early 70’s, only becoming available again
after his death in 1987, where many have been restored for viewing status. He began making films in 1963 only after
experiencing success as a painter and sculptor, where one of his earliest is the
5-hour-and-21-minute SLEEP (1963), which is exactly that, originally conceived
with an idea of filming a sleeping Brigitte Bardot, but the man filmed was his
friend and lover, poet John Giorno. The original
screening was attended by only nine people, with two exiting during the first
hour, a minimalist technique he would exaggerate even further with the 8-hour
EMPIRE (1964), a single static shot of the Empire State Building from early
evening until nearly 3 am the next day. In
these exhaustive works, the audience becomes an extension of the live
performance witnessed onscreen.
In the beginning of 1966, Warhol began a collaboration with
the musical group the Velvet Underground, icons of the music world today, but
they were extremely “unpopular” at the time, with a droning electric viola and
lyrics that focused on drugs, prostitution, S & M, and other gritty topics
that were considered controversial at the time, banned from the airwaves, defined
by avant-garde or experimental rock, doing several Screen Tests of German lead
singer Nico (Christa Pӓffgen), which along with clips from EMPIRE (1964) and
VINYL (1965) would be blown up to play as a backdrop behind the performers,
featuring various dancers from the Factory (like Mary Woronov and Gerard
Malanga) along with a multi-screen film projection and elaborate light shows
known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which eventually
became associated with live rock shows of the era, used regularly by rock
promoter Bill Graham at the Fillmore
East and Fillmore West.
It was during this experimentation with multiple formats that Warhol
conceived CHELSEA GIRLS, each segment featuring his underground stable of
Factory stars, including Nico (and her children), Pope Ondine (Bob Olivio),
Brigid Polk (Brigid Berlin), Ingrid Superstar (Ingrid Von Scheven),
International Velvet (Susan Bottomly), Mary Woronov, Ed Hood, Rene Ricard, Patrick
Fleming, Angelina “Pepper” Davis, Eric Emerson, poet, photographer and
filmmaker Gerard Malanga, experimental filmmaker Marie Menken, and transvestite
Mario Montez. One thing that immediately
stands out is Warhol pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech, exhibiting an
extreme tolerance of both the drug culture and homosexuality, where both had
rarely been expressed so openly before.
What Warhol could express as an underground filmmaker was considerably
less commercial, and less censored, like his earlier film BLOW JOB (1963), a
single 35-minute shot of the expressions captured on a man’s face as he
receives oral sex, opening up an entirely new world not only to the 1960s counterculture, but a new gay
audience which was finally being represented onscreen, where gay characters
were being depicted as complex human beings.
Growing out of Kerouac and the Beat
Generation, some of whose writers were openly gay, like Allen Ginsberg and
William S. Burroughs, whose notorious censorship trials about graphic sexual
depictions of homosexual sex eventually liberates the written word, Warhol,
along with experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who successfully fought his
own obscenity charges, helped define cinema as art rather than pornography. Warhol was fighting similar battles on the
art front, mass producing silkscreens in much the same way corporations
mass-produced consumer goods, redefining standards of what was considered art,
attracting fringe characters who were adult film performers, drag queens, drug
addicts, musicians, or would-be celebrities that helped him create his
paintings, starred in his films, or mixed with wealthy socialites, creating
their own subculture while contributing to the legendary atmosphere of the
times.
CHELSEA GIRLS was one of the last pure art films Warhol made
before he got involved producing sexploitation movies like LONESOME COWBOYS
(1968), TRASH (1970), and HEAT (1972) directed by Paul Morrissey that made a
lot more money playing in commercial theaters.
Even today, snippets of Warhol’s Screen
Tests may be seen playing silently in the video galleries of modern art
museums, where arguably more people see them in a single day than ever watched
them throughout Warhol’s lifetime, even if they’re only glanced at
occasionally. Tedium is part of the
Warhol experience, where the camera passively records the banality of
existence, filming ordinary human experiences, like trimming one’s hair,
washing dishes, talking on the telephone, complaining bitterly about something
or somebody, being bored, injecting drugs, talking about oneself, dominating
the discussion, interjecting rude comments and insults, telling others to “shut
up,” where things grow increasingly hostile after a while, occasionally growing
wildly out of control, where the real subject appears to be close-ups, with the
camera remaining in a fixed position often zooming in and out, altering the
focus, sometimes side to side, yet what we see remains the same throughout each
reel, where there’s a good deal of familiarity and repetition that the audience
must adjust to, as everything takes place in the claustrophobic confines of
small hotel rooms. Apparently Nico,
Brigid Berlin, and International Velvet lived in the Chelsea Hotel, through
Brigid claimed she only spent about one night a week in her room, visiting
others continuously, where the film does provide an interchangeable feel of
moving from room to room, where people come and go, as if transience is part of
the overall experience. The narcissistic
fixation on oneself is obvious, as these individuals are obsessed with
themselves a half century before the era of selfies, showing little patience or
regard for others, as if they’ve lived their entire lives for this one moment
to shine. For some, like Ondine or Mary Woronov,
being in front of a camera is the most naturalistic thing in the world, where
they’re free to say whatever they want, and both are lucid and intelligible,
but aggressively vicious, while Nico, on the other hand, feels as if she’s used
to people constantly taking her picture, like a fashion model, where she may
have no other life except in front of a camera.
Shot from June to September in 1966, the film is generally improvised,
with only one written scene by Ron Tavel, the “Hanoi Hannah” sequence starring
Woronov. When Jonas Mekas asked for a
film to screen, Morrisey and Warhol reduced the footage to 12 reels, with the
first seven (and reel 11) in black and white, while the other four are in
color, growing increasingly hallucinogenic by the end, where they decided to
show them on two screens in order to reduce the film time from 6 ½ to 3 ½
hours.
One of the interesting aspects of this particular film is
how each experience is slightly different, where projectors may be stuck behind
a booth or may be out in the open, changing reels in the same dark room as the
viewing audience, where the whirr of the projectors is the initial sound heard
before anything appears onscreen and is part of the sound heard throughout. Initially when released in the 60’s the reel
changes were completely random, where the projector could simply pick and
choose them in any order, though by now there is an established order and
symmetry to the film, yet the actual sequences seen side-by-side are altered by
the timing of the reel changes, which are different in each screening, as each
reel plays out until it runs into a blank leader and goes dark. As a result, no two screenings are exactly
alike. Shot in the Chelsea Hotel, the
Factory, and various other apartments including the Velvet Underground’s apartment
on West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village, the film begins and ends on Nico,
initially seen trimming her bangs in her kitchen by staring into a handheld
mirror, occasionally interrupted by her 4-year old son Ari while talking idly
with friends. The second reel
introduces Pope Ondine, supposedly the “Pope” of Greenwich Village, with Ingrid
Superstar as they engage in a contentious discussion about their lifestyles, The Chelsea Girl (1966),
Paul Morrissey - Andy Warhol ...
YouTube (3:50), urging her to make a holy confession (while in the same
breath acknowledging a deep-seeded hatred for the church), then berating her
when it’s not personal enough, going on an extended rant of his own, demanding
that she admit to being a lesbian, and when she refuses, screams at her, “I’ve
seen you at Page Three and a lot of other dyke joints!” When Ingrid refuses to be bullied, Ondine
denounces her, “You’re a subspecies, my dear.
You’re not even a vegetable!” The
third reel introduces an overconfident Brigid Berlin (aka Brigid Polk), who
delights in conducting various drug transactions by phone while lying or
sitting in her bed, eventually injecting amphetamines into her system by
sticking a needle into her butt through her blue jeans, as if this defiant portrait
defines who she is. The fourth reel
introduces two men lying on a bed, an older poet, art critic, and painter Rene
Ricard dressed in a bathrobe, and pretty boy Patrick Fleming, his own personal
boy toy who is dressed only in white undies.
Two women eventually protrude from the edge of the frame, one of whom
ties up Patrick with a belt, but most of this is mere horseplay. Reels 5 and 6 blend into each other,
introducing Mary Woronov as Hanoi Hannah, talking with International Velvet,
who is literally caked with mascara, while Brigid is confined to a place
underneath a desk. Occasionally Brigid
might scream something, but Hannah simply tells her to “shut up.” By the next segment, another woman (Pepper
Davis) has been added to the room, while Hannah has become more intimidating,
unleashing her venom towards each of them, but in camp fashion, as if she is
the dominant dyke in a prison cell. This
segment is notable for the tears seen streaming down Pepper’s face, as she is
living a visible nightmare.
Scripted or not, the prevailing tone throughout is a
pronounced sadomasochism, where inflicting obvious hurt and pain is definitely part
of the process, while others, perhaps not so willingly, are on the receiving
end of vicious verbal attacks, though it’s expressed in the manner of a trashy
melodrama, like something you might pick up in a dime store novel with a lurid
picture on the cover. The viewer is implicated
in what takes place onscreen, as voyeurism is the prescribed Warhol
methodology, where the artist literally takes hold of your brain by forcing
what he likes onto the screen, making each individual viewer come to terms with
what they see. Of interest, Woronov was
the only actress to learn her lines, not that anybody noticed or seemed to care,
as they were too busy establishing their own character in front of the
camera. By reel seven, which feels
shortened, we have returned to the “boys in the bed,” though this time drag
queen Mario Montez, dressed like she’s costumed for Gone with the Wind, sings several songs. Neither of them are visibly impressed, though
Patrick Fleming takes great pleasure in openly flirting in front of Rene, which
only makes him want to possess him even more, like he’s his own personal property. By reel 8, the film switches to color, as we
observe Marie Menken, an avant-garde artist in her own right, dressed in a hat
resembling Bella Abzug, playing the character of a Mother berating
her son, Gerard Malanga, denouncing him as a “hippie,” while he’s placed in the
disadvantageous position of having to defend his marriage to Hanoi Hannah, who
sits inertly in the corner dressed in a white shirt and tie. Mother’s assertive harangue stands in stark
contrast to the passive indifference expressed by the other two. By reel nine, the tone has shifted, becoming
more psychedelic, as this is largely a long and rambling soliloquy by Eric
Emerson, a trained classical ballet dancer who was supposedly on LSD at the
time. As he grooves on his own body, becoming
a literal striptease of the body and soul, one can already hear the spacy
refrains of Walking in
Space - Hair - YouTube (4:38) from the musical Hair that would be released the following year, while reel 10 is an
assembled Factory audience, like a Greek chorus, that bears witness to his earth
shift, predominately expressed through lighting effects and changing colors on
facial close-ups. These voiceless
characters act as more of a set-up for what follows, as reel eleven is the most
devastating of them all.
Returning back to the stark reality of black and white, Pope
Ondine, a gay, self-proclaimed high priest in the art of the mindfuck, who sees
himself as a kind of savant able to gaze deeply into other people’s souls,
gives himself a fix of amphetamine before he takes centerstage. Desiring a willing subject who will offer a full
confession, it turns out to be Ronna Page, a friend of Jonas Mekas and Gerard
Malanga, who has the unmitigated gall to call him a phony. Erupting in anger, Ondine first throws water
in her face before slapping her silly in full assault mode, where his
misogynist posture is on full display, a dreadfully horrific moment even when
viewed half a century later. There’s
nothing contrived or phony about this as she scurries away, vehemently upset
even twenty minutes later, still screaming back at him offstage, certainly
among the most dramatically uncomfortable scenes in cinema, as he shows no
remorse and instead relentlessly attacks this woman voraciously for the
duration of the screen time, reduced to having little more to offer the camera
than yet another fix. Without question,
Ondine is a dick. Through his actions, we’re
forced to conclude the drug-induced pathway seeking freedom and liberation is also
the pathway to prison and one’s own personal hell, where his performance has
been compared to Sartre’s No Exit. Fortunately there’s more. While Ondine has the final word, as that reel
sputters to an end, a live performance of a Velvet Underground jam session
plays out in a musical ascension during the final reel, returning back to Nico,
who is captured in a wordless portrait through Day-Glo colors and red filters,
but can be seen crying, an apt response to what was just viewed on the other
screen, though the real context revealed later is that she’s listening to
music, perhaps the same revelatory music we’re listening to. The music and the hallucinogenic light show
on Nico’s alluring face brings the film to a close, where the music continues
well after the celluloid ends and the room turns to dark. The final two sequences are electrifying. Despite the passage of time and an amateur
nature of some of the performances, the entire piece maintains a modernistic
mindset, like a brilliantly choreographed ballet of mood shifts.
Jonas Mekas from The
Village Voice, September 29, 1966, The Chelsea Girls
(Andy Warhol) Reviews
The Chelsea Girls has a classical
grandeur about it, something from Victor Hugo. Its grandeur is the grandeur of
its subject, the human scope of its subject. And it is a tragic film. The lives
that we see in this film are full of desperation, hardness, and terror. It’s
there for everybody to see and to think about. Every work of art helps us to
understand ourselves by describing to us those aspects of our lives, which we
either know little of or fear. It’s there in black on white before our eyes,
this collection of desperate creatures, the desperate part of our being, the
avant-garde of our being. And one of the amazing things about this film is that
the people in it are not really actors; or if they are acting, their acting
becomes unimportant. It becomes part of their personalities, and there they
are, totally real, with their transformed, intensified selves. The screen
acting is expanded by an ambiguity between real and unreal. This is part of
Warhol’s filming technique, and very often it is a painful technique. There is
the girl who walks from scene to scene crying, real tears, really hurt; a girl,
under LSD probably, who isn't even aware, or only half aware, that she is being
filmed; the “priest” who gives into a fit of rage (a real rage) and then slaps
the girl right and left (a real slap, not the actors slap) when she begins to
talk about God-in probably the most dramatic religious sequence ever filmed.
Toward the end, the film bursts into color-not the usual color-movie color but
a dramatized exalted, screaming red color of terror.
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