Ciao! Manhattan (1972) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-John Palmer And David Weisman (Co-Directors),Wesley Hayes Interviews-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Outtakes-With Optional Commentary Booklet Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1972
Running Time	90:04
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:17)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	John Palmer David Weisman
Studio Distributor	Court Pictures Stomp Visual	Starring	Edie Sedgwick Isabel Jewell Wesley Hayes Paul America Baby Jane Holzer Pat Hartley Jean Margouleff Viva Brigid Berlin Nell Bassett Jeff Briggs Tom Flye Gabriel Lampa
Case	Alpha-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Skip Battyn Kim Fowley Richie Havens

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Ciao! Manhattan is a dog's breakfast of a film. Originally conceived as an entirely different film, a lot of footage was shot in black and white in 1967, but that film was never completed. Four years later the filmmakers returned to shoot a framing story around the original footage, this time in colour.

    As you might guess, the resulting film is a mess. The story begins with a young man, Butch, driving to Malibu. He picks up a topless hitchhiker named Susan, who is wasted on drugs. He takes her home to a rundown mansion, where her mother bakes pies most of the time. Susan lives in a sort of tent in the empty swimming pool. A series of flashbacks looks to her life in the Factory, the Andy Warhol collective of wannabe celebrities in the mid 1960s. I think the intention was to chart the decline in Susan's life, but I found the second part of the film quite confusing, with no plot and appearances by several characters who do not seem to do anything, such as Vordecchio, a combination Svengali-Mabuse-drug baron. There is also a sub-plot involving "saucer people".

    In retrospect, this film can be seen as a sort of biography of Edie Sedgwick, who plays Susan. The flashbacks to her own involvement in the Factory are documentary in style, showing her as a model and, well, I am not sure what she was doing. Sedgwick was the typical Twiggy-type model in the 1967 footage: very slender, glamorous but empty. In the 1971 footage she has put on weight and spends most of the time topless, allegedly because she wanted to show off her breast implants. She also seems genuinely affected by drugs and does not appear to be acting. Sadly, just three months after the later footage was shot, she was dead from a drug overdose.

    Butch is played by actor Wesley Hayes, who seems to have been taken directly from the streets to appear in this film. Susan's mother is played by veteran actress Isabel Jewell, the only professional actor in the film, who had almost become a star during the 1930s. However, her career waned and she fell on hard times, having several brushes with the law. She died, apparently in poverty, shortly before the film was released in 1972.

    Also appearing in the film are French actor Christian Marquand, French director Roger Vadim and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. In the commentary, the directors claim that the film directed itself, but I think they are just trying to deny responsibility for the outcome.

    Ordinarily I would be recommending everyone but insomniacs avoid this DVD like the plague. However, this disc is an example of the ability of supplementary material to lift something otherwise mediocre into an interesting package. See the Extras section for more details.

Video

    The video quality afforded to this film is problematic.

    The film is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is enhanced for 16x9 displays. The video is in NTSC format.

    Firstly, the colour footage. This was shot with what looks like cheap 35mm stock. The colour is either slightly faded or was not very good to begin with, or perhaps both. Flesh tones are reasonably well portrayed, but generally this has the look of an average quality 16mm print. The resolution is poor with sharpness compromised. Shadow detail is average but acceptable, although some of the indoor sequences are slightly murky.

    The black and white footage looks much better. It is much sharper and cleaner looking, although shadow detail is not very good, with some murky looking shots.

    Film artefacts abound. These are limited to dirt, flecks and spots, and mild scratches, which occur almost constantly throughout the film. It is a pity that this was not cleaned up.

    The film is presented on an RSDL-formatted disc with the mildly disruptive layer break occurring at 60:17.  

    This is one film that really needs subtitles, and of course we do not get any.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The default audio track is English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. There is also a German Dolby Digital 2.0 track. No use is made of the surrounds or subwoofer.

    The original soundtrack was recorded in mono, and has been well transferred on this disc. Unfortunately, the film appears to have been poorly recorded in the first place. The sound level for dialogue varies, so that if you turn up the volume to hear what the soft-voiced  Edie is saying, the other voices come across as too loud. This is inherent in the source material, so I guess we have to live with it. Apart from this, dialogue is often muffled or mumbled and difficult to understand. Subtitles would have been a help here, so their absence is a problem.

    As described in the commentary, some scenes were shot with a camera without soundproofing, so a lot of the footage was dubbed after the shooting. Some of the actors, such as the non-actor playing Vordecchio (a financier of the film) were dubbed by other people. Audio sync is therefore not very good, but this is not a problem introduced by the transfer.

    The music score is from a variety of sources, mostly by Gino Piserchio, Kim Fowley and Kim Milford, with songs by Gordon Lightfoot and John Phillips. The score is quite good, particularly the electronic music by Piserchio done with a Moog synthesizer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    As mentioned above, the extras are important in understanding the film and the context of the action shown. This is the first DVD from a company called Plexifilm, and if their subsequent efforts are up to this standard, then more power to them.

Menu

    The menu is nicely animated with music from the film.

Audio Commentary with David Weisman, John Palmer and Wesley Hayes

    This is an informative commentary. We get to hear about the production problems including the disappearance of the lead actors during the 1967 filming. The film-makers also discuss the meaning of certain sequences and are candid about their difficulties in putting together a film with any sort of narrative. There is one problem with the commentary, and that is that the three speakers compete all of the time to get their two cents worth in, and as a consequence some of the stories are cut off halfway through. Still, this is an antidote to all those commentaries with long silences.

Interviews with George Plimpton, Wesley Hayes, Betsey Johnson and David Weisman (30:26)

    These interviews were made recently, though obviously before Plimpton's death in 2003. Plimpton, a famous journalist, knew Edie during the 1960s and Johnson, the costume designer on the film, has an over-inflated sense of the importance of the era fashion-wise. The interviews are presented in 1.33:1 and the video also has that less than sharp look, with some aliasing present. The content is interesting, though.

Supplementary Footage (27:14)

    This material is taken from 36 hours of 1967 negatives discovered by David Weisman in 1998. The footage has no soundtrack, so it is presented here in two forms: silent, and with a commentary by Weisman and Gary Hustwit. The footage looks no worse than the main feature, and is quite interesting. Present in the footage are both parents of Uma Thurman.

Theatrical Trailer (3:45)

    This original release trailer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is quite good in that it makes the film look better than it is.

Photo Gallery

    This contains a number of family photos of Edie as well as modelling shots and production stills.

Booklet

   This eight page booklet contains photos of Edie and text written by David Weisman outlining the history of the film.

    This DVD is identical to that released in Region 1, so I would call this a draw.

    This is a poor film, aimless and without much in the way of plot. It may be a window into a time and lifestyle that no longer exists, so as a curio it may be of interest, particularly if you are fascinated with the Warhol scene.

    The video quality is below average.

    The audio quality is satisfactory.

    The extras are copious and more interesting than the film itself.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall