The filmography of Andy Warhol (1928-1987) undoubtedly owed him much more than the artist was willing to admit. Paul Morrissey, director, producer and central figure of underground cinema, died at the age of 86 in New York due to pneumonia.
Born on February 23, 1938 in Manhattan to an Irish family, Paul Morrissey spent his education in Catholic schools before joining the US Army. While he was a reservist, the young man settled in New York and opened a small cinematheque, the Exit Gallery, which screened underground films and the early works of Brian De Palma. At the same time, he began making his first experimental films in 16 mm.
It was in 1965 when Paul Morrissey met Andy Warhol. Warhol, a brilliant artist, was also a vampire: he knew how to surround himself very well with talented people from whom he absorbed their creative energy, appropriating their ideas. So much so that within the collaboration between Warhol and Morrissey, it is very difficult to distinguish the merits of each one. One certainty remains: Morrissey’s talent was underestimated and sometimes denied.
Tribulations of a gigolo
The 27-year-old starts out as a simple technical collaborator in my scammer (1965), before co-directing the splendid chelsea girls (1966), the first great success of underground cinema. On a screen divided in two, a succession of fixed shots observes the residents of the legendary Chelsea Hotel in a series of prosaic actions. Fascinating and rarely screened, the film, which lasts more than three hours, fulfills a voyeuristic dream of insignificance that reality TV prophesies.
Between 1968 and 1972, Paul Morrissey directed the trilogy Meat/Garbage/Heat – Warhol, recovering from an assassination attempt, is now only a producer. The series follows the travails of a heroin-addicted gigolo painfully trying to survive in New York’s underworld. Morrissey’s camera is magnetized by the beauty of his actor, Joe Dallesandro, undoubtedly one of the most sensual appearances in American cinema – we will see him again in I don’t love you either (1976), by Serge Gainsbourg.
Morrissey gives his contours and letters of nobility to underground cinema, and rigorously applies the principles of the New Wave: budget of $10,000, 16 mm and live sound, wild filming in a dark New York, minimal instructions given to the actors. The trilogy shows the existences and bodies of marginalized people who will never have a place in mainstream fiction. It will be the greatest success of Paul Morrissey, who thus emerges from the shadow of his mentor, inaugurates the cinema of the 1970s and will even influence Jim Jarmusch and the Safdie brothers.
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