THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
Some places, through their history, through the people who frequented them and the culture associated with them, become institutions, myths of their time, marked as such. Their evolution becomes, for this very reason, a symbol of the way in which they confront time, between transformation and disappearance. It is obviously the right time for a filmmaker to set up his camera there. Which is what Maya Duverdier and Joe Rohanne did not fail to do when they entered the legendary Chelsea Hotel. This sumptuous twelve-story red brick Victorian building, built in 1883 in Manhattan, became a hotel in 1905, quickly appreciated by artists to the point of becoming not only a rallying point, but also a permanent residence.
The shadows of Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Yves Klein, Arthur Miller, Shirley Clarke, Frida Kahlo, Janis Joplin, Nico, Patti Smith, Milos Forman – the list is as long as an arm – hover over these places where poverty crossed paths with glory, where artists willingly paid in works of art, where Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot the 1966 film Chelsea Girls. Listed as a New York historical monument in 1977, the hotel was eaten away by dilapidation and ended up changing owners in 2011, passing into the hands of a real estate developer who was not very sensitive to the charms of its bohemian style. The focus was set on luxury.
Deliberately impressionistic
This is where our filmmakers come in, giving an image of the place in full renovation, filming a few recalcitrant residents, clinging to their accommodation, holders of its memory, almost ghostly artists embodying in themselves the ongoing destruction of the utopia that sat in these places. The addition of archives – the hotel was filmed a lot – reveals images from the past, that of Patti Smith herself in search of traces of the poet Dylan Thomas, that of Stanley Bard, its legendary director, that of the Japanese painter Hiroya, who used to sleep in a coffin and who ended up, under acid, throwing himself down the stairwell.
Read the story (2022): Article reserved for our subscribers In New York, the bohemian aura of the Chelsea Hotel
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Deliberately impressionistic, the film plays, like many others, the mythology card of the place at a time when it is beginning to fade and its dream collides head-on with a reality that wants to be without remainder. In this respect, it would have been interesting – in a more classic documentary style, of course – to try to find out more not only about the current characters, but also about the other forces present, on the side of the developers, the new owner or the city of New York. It would have been, it is true, a completely different film.
