First Thoughts on "Ciao! Manhattan"

We have some history, Ciao, Manhattan! and I. This 1972 experimental film first came onto my radar when it appeared as part of a massive program of New York movies on the Criterion Channel in fall of 2021 - just as my book about New York movies, Fun City Cinema (plug plug plug) was appearing in bookstores. I approached it with suspicion, because that’s what you do when someone tells you that you missed something important in a book you spent three years writing and researching. (The “someone,” in this case, is the Criterion Channel’s programmers, and they weren’t “telling” me anything, but y’know, you spend enough time on a project and you start taking these things personally.) And it wouldn’t do me any good to watch it then anyway. I was just starting to realize that, for the rest of my life, I will encounter two things w/r/t this book: 1) movies I somehow knew nothing about and will regret not including in it, and 2) movies that I will be mad came out after I wrote it, because they would’ve fit right in. (In the Heights was a good example of the latter.)

But when this week’s guest, production designer Judy Becker, included Ciao, Manhattan! on her “honorable mention” list, it felt like a challenge. Because it didn’t win awards or top the box office, that honorable mention designation merely meant that it would go near the top of the lightning round. Judy would barely talk about it, the lightning round being what it is; I might say a word or two at most, and while we take pains to make sure we’ve watched all the films on the guest’s top five, we do not do that with the lightning round.

But I watched Ciao, Manhattan! anyway. And it is fascinating.