Reviews

This was the first I'd ever heard of James Dean, when I saw it in the 70's as a teenager. The fifties were not popular with kids at the time. It came out pre "Happy Days". That is why, I believe, the 70's music was used. It's an attempt to draw kids into the James Dean Myth, and the fifties in general. At the time, I loved the music and still remember a part were the song "James Dean" by The Eagles was playing as Dean walks around a race track. It's my first memory of Dean. There wasn't much about Dean available at the time. No VHS, DVD, books or youtube. This made him seem much more mysterious and iconic then he seems to me now. Wish I could see it again, though I'm sure the music would seem dated and it wouldn't have the same impact, with all the Dean material available today.

First off, every rock fan must see this film. Other reviewers have touched on the important highlights. What strikes me, here in 2006, is that the film should also be seen by everyone attending the current U. N. conference in NYC. It is the perfect model of the eternal love/hate struggle between the entitled moral front and it's financial base. The promoters of this event seem earnest in their wish to put on a show for the the kids and ultimately have to get in bed with the financial world in order to do it. Otherwise, there would be no Happening. The kids, however, seem to feel that the show should be "on the dole" as some sort of socialist entitlement. A fine idea, except for the fact that The Queen doesn't sponsor Rock concerts. For that, you need Capitalist pigs. Rikki, the most innocent of the promoters, rants on about how the business people "only care about bread man." But, why shouldn't they? They are business people, not rock fans, and are doing what they do to feed their families, stay out of bankruptcy and only incidentally provide Art to the masses. Rikki learns the hard way that the rewards of good intentions are often poxed with hate and misunderstandings. He stands on the stage trying to reason with an unreasonable mass of stoned kids, looking like a Mother trying to tell her infant children to "p... in the toilet." Of course, the kids don't understand and seem to want Rikki's blood. They view him as the mouthpiece of the Capitalist pigs, when all Riki is trying to do, is to pay for the year he spent putting The Happening together. This was not to be. Rikki & Company wound up in Bankruptcy(the reason that the film wasn't released for 27 years), abandoned by the very kids he wished to identify with and undoubtedly, converted from a good intended kid into a total Capitalist pig himself.

If Awareness and Tolerance were the goals of the sixties youth culture, then the Isle of Wight is a testament to the utter failure of that ideal. One can only hope that events of history are not lost on future generations. However, 36 years after 1970... just like 36 years before, Awareness and Tolerance still spring eternal/occasional and in 2006, the history books seem to be gathering more dust then ever. Maybe John Lennon should have sung "Imagine all the people, aware and accepting of the slings, arrows and virtues of both capitalism and socialism." But, that just doesn't roll off the lips as sweetly. Art can turn bitter without a hated, but essential financial plan, and vice versa. ...and the band played on.

A silver lipstick stained blueprint to the "Big Come Down" era, Ciao Manhattan is, by technical standards, very bad. Though the color sequences are well photographed and the older clips seem well reproduced, the narrative is clumsy and the sound is choppy. This doesn't bother me and whereas, I would like to see a coherent documentary on Edie, the flaws of the film are perfect alongside the flawed characters in the film. It possesses a very paranoid, broken and detached quality that is in keeping with a certain sub genre that has grown over the ensuing years. In music, it's everything low-fi since the LP, The Velvet Underground & Nico(1967). In film-making, it's any art film since Andy Warhol's Empire(1964).

The film is, quite by incident, the very quintessence of the dangers of mixing cinema verity lifestyle with a diet of tablets which include a total disregard for the wages of sin, in favor of "really living". (i.e. on film, on drugs and off reality). What illustrates this is that Susan(Edie)isn't really acting in this film, but seems to be fooling herself (with coaxing from the filmmakers, no doubt) into thinking that she is, simply because, she's using the name Susan and is probably on LSD most of the time. It's a kind of twisted defense mechanism that Edie is using to distance herself from her own personal reality. This is ironic, considering the fact that her personal reality is the focus of the entire film and that her(Edie's) own mortal coil is unraveling faster then footage can record it. But, the cameras are tenacious and keep rolling thru her staged shock treatments(a true event) to her "last chance at a normal life" marriage(a true event captured on 8mm complete with a Warholsque posterized sequence) and finally a news clipping of her obituary.

The film serves well as a cautionary tale to the contemporary modern girl, with Susan(Edie) as the prototype modern girl, trying anything new, without regard to the consequences. i.e. forced stardom, derelict emotions, mood management drugs, radical psychotherapy techniques and even a botched breast job. This has all become a common lifestyle today(in 2006), perfected by time and human casualty. Susan(Edie) was an incidental trailblazer in a film(lifestyle) where the sun shines too white hot for human beings to bare it, yet is too intoxicating for the obsessive ones to turn away from. Like a pretty, lactose intolerant, lab rat that keeps eating the cheese in spite of the gas pains, Susan(Edie) was caught in a maze of learned behavior and couldn't resist it's unhealthy escapism's, even though she must have felt the grim reaper's hand on her emaciated shoulder. As long as she was feeding her head and all eyes where on her, she really lived. She only "snuffed it" after filming had concluded and she was faced the realism of a sober, off camera existence.

The book "Edie, An American Biography" is required reading if you want to get the most out of this film and may be all you can take. *Not for the mentally squeamish.