The Chelsea Girls
d. Andy Warhol, 1966
Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls is a long, rambling, self-indulgent exercise. However, I still feel compelled to write a review and it is important to note that I meant my first sentence as a review. I could see an experimental film like this not working, but Warhol and his cast are so sure of their fabulousness that the result is a spellbinding and hypnotic experience like no other.
In 1966, Warhol filmed 12, 33 minute reels at the Chelsea Hotel. In the film, he plays 2 of them at a time, which averages out to about 180 minutes of unrelated segments of people like Nico, Pope Ondine (who steals the show), Brigid Berlin, and other Warhol "superstars."
What makes The Chelsea Girls truly successful is the amount of freedom that is given to the viewer. With two reels playing at a time (only one of the two has sound), it is up to the viewer what to focus his attention on. This, in turn, becomes an examination of our experience at the movies and what is expected from one.
The different segments, not related in any way, vary from the very strange, as is the segment titled "Boys in Bed," to the truly sublime, the last 33 minutes in which one of the reels is titled "Nico Crying" and the other shows Ondine shooting up heroin and then trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his time. The one thing all of these sequences have in common is the organic feel that is common not only present in Warhol's work, but in a lot of other experimental films. This fundamentally fascinating exercise is a very unique experience.
