Who wants to be an angel? ✵ Chelsea Girls - REBEL REBEL ✵ 1960–1974 - The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

RG

RG

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Experimental

DIRECTOR

Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey

WRITERS

Andy Warhol, Ronald Tavel

STARS

Nico, Brigid Berlin, Ondine, Mary Woronov, Gerard Malanga

BEFORE

1963 Sleep, one of Warhol’s first experiments with “anti-film,” consists of five hours of footage showing his friend John Giorno sleeping.

1964 Warhol’s Empire is an eight-hour-long movie of the Empire State Building at night.

AFTER

1968 Lonesome Cowboys is Warhol and Morrissey’s raunchy take on Romeo and Juliet, satirizing Westerns.

Soon after Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s experimental movie Chelsea Girls was released in 1966, critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Warhol has nothing to say and no technique to say it with.” But few movies have ever reflected so strongly the moment in which they were made.

Chelsea Girls was a provocative look at New York’s counterculture. To make the movie, Warhol and Morrissey filmed the lives of his friends as they did what came naturally—talk, bitch, do drugs, have sex, listen to music. This eccentric clique became known as the Warhol Superstars. They included singer Nico, photographer Gerard Malanga, and actor Ondine. The title of the movie comes from the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan where many of them hung out. Other locations included Warhol’s Factory studio and various apartments.

"It’s the movies that have really been running things in America, ever since they were invented."

Andy Warhol

Voyeur viewing

The camera was a deliberately intrusive presence, and the movie captures its subjects’ narcissistic relationships in an unsettling way. The shooting is rough, so we are always aware that they are being filmed, a technique Warhol called “anti-film.” Warhol and Morrissey ended up with twelve 33-minute movies, half in color, and half in monochrome, which they joined together into a single split-screen movie. As the audience’s eyes flicker between the screens, the effect is to reinforce their role as voyeurs watching these people during their moment in the spotlight.

What else to watch: Scorpio Rising (1963) ✵ (1963) ✵ Blow-Up (1966) ✵ Performance (1970) ✵ I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) ✵ The Cremaster Cycle (2002)