Outer and Inner Space (1966) User Reviews

Andy and Edie's masterpiece

[nunculus · 6 July 2002]

Norelco gave Warhol free video cameras to do with what he pleased--just so long as it would, natch, attract publicity. What he came up with is (with the color LUPE) the masterpiece of Edie Sedgwick's and Warhol's collaboration.

Consisting of two simultaneously projected side-by-side reels, each image features a "live" Edie, her head posed next to a video monitor on which appears a "video Edie." That is to say: four Edie heads in total. The sound kind of chuffles back and forth between left and right projections...one cannot tell entirely what is being spoken, by the on-tape or live Edie, but it seems to have something to do with outer space, medication, and, the quintessential subject, her disastrously messed-up family. In no other movie I can think of--not even Dreyer's JOAN OF ARC--is there such a strong sense of the expression of a human soul through the face (in this case, faces). Ponder the movie for years as a meditation on media-tion, doubled identity, or, as one critic put it, "wounded narcissism;" the plain and simple of it is that OUTER AND INNER SPACE ranks with the portraiture of Vermeer and Velasquez as a masterly extractor and interpreter of outer and inner life.

Four versions of the same woman

[mrdonleone · 3/10 · 14 October 2019]

Outer and Inner Space contains a lot of speaking through one another, like Warhols Chelsea Girls. There, owever, you could still make up a story: here it is mainly an annoying buzzing which remains in your head long after the movie is done. Next to this it remains beautiful just how much Edie Sedgwick speaks while saying nothing at all. This movie clearly exists only for the experience of having four versions of the same woman pleasing you at the same time.

dazzling

[littlesiddie · 1 March 2004]

Edie Sedgwick definitely had star quality. She is absolutely dazzling in this movie. I wish I had a video copy of this movie so I could watch it over and over.

It's a pity that Edie didn't get a chance to be in any real movies. The silly artsy aspects of this movie are just annoying. The profile shots of Edie on the TV behind her are just stupid and distracting. Having two versions of her, one semi-audible, and one inaudible, is stupid and annoying. Having her being only, at best, semi-audible was irritating. Not being able to hear the comments she was responding to was a pain in the butt. And so on.

But the worst thing about this movie, or rather, the hardest thing to take, is the horrendous mercurial flow of different emotions running across Edie's sweet little face. It was like she was possessed by demons. It also looked as if she felt like she was a helpless little monkey trapped in a cage and that cruel, idle people were poking her through the bars with sharp sticks just to watch her jump. The hardest facial expressions to take are when a look of abject horror, hopelessness and fear crosses her face. Obviously much of what was tormenting her was the drugs, and among them, amphetamines were the chief culprit. One can't help but wonder what kind of life she could have had if she hadn't fallen in with the Warhol crowd.

All in all, this was a beautiful and touching testament to a sweet little angel who was callously crushed under the wheel of NYC hipness and coolness.