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Four Stars

Name: Four Stars
Director: Andy Warhol
Released: 1967
Duration: 999 min

Representation Score

5.0/10

Fair

1967

TV-MA

Director

Andy Warhol

Runtime

999 minutes

Average Rating

No ratings yet

New Showbiz Analysis

Four Stars functions as a radical deconstruction of cinematic structure. By replacing traditional acting with mere existence, Warhol disrupts the medium's ability to reinforce systemic hierarchies of gender, race, and morality. The film's strength lies in its refusal to participate in mainstream narrative clichés. It validates the presence of underrepresented subcultures through an observational lens rather than through explicit political messaging. Ultimately, the work serves as a postmodern tool that challenges capitalist impulses for entertainment. It prioritizes subjective reality over the manufactured hierarchies found in conventional storytelling.

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Category Breakdown

Does Four Stars have LGBTQ+ representation?

Fair

The film acts as a visual archive of the 1960s New York queer underground. It observes the queer identities within the Warhol Factory circle, avoiding traditional storytelling focused on straight relationships.

How does Four Stars portray gender?

Fair

The experimental, non-narrative structure neutralizes traditional gender hierarchies. The camera uses an egalitarian gaze that avoids showing submissive femininity or dominant masculine leadership.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Four Stars?

Fair

The cast reflects the diverse, avant-garde social landscape of cq New York. However, the film lacks specific, verifiable instances of multi-layered depth or a non-white majority cast.

How does Four Stars represent religion and culture?

Good

Warhol presents a postmodern critique of Western media consumption. The work prioritizes a secular, avant-garde ethos over singular moral or religious frameworks.

Does Four Stars include disability representation?

Minimal

The film provides no discernible engagement with disability narratives. There is no evidence of characters using disability as a plot device or being mocked.

Present on Screen

Disrupts traditional gender and power hierarchies through a non-narrative, egalitarian camera gaze.
Provides a significant visual archive of the 1960s New York queer underground.
Avoids common period cinema pitfalls like whitewashing by focusing on specific avant-garde subcultures.

Limited or Absent

Lacks explicit multi-layered depth or a clearly non-white majority cast.
Does not engage with disability narratives or provide representation in that area.
Lacks structured narratives to explicitly critique the assumption that everyone is straight or cisgender or depict romantic arcs.

Official Synopsis

Photographed entirely in color, Four Stars was projected in its complete length of nearly 25 hours (allowing for projection overlap of the 35-minute reels) only once, at the Film-Makers' Cinematheque in New York City. The imagery in the film is dense, wearying and beautiful, but ultimately hard to decipher, for, in contrast to his earlier, and more famous film Chelsea Girls, made in 1966, Warhol insisted that two reels be screened simultaneously on top of each other on a single screen, rather than side-by-side. The film's title is a pun on the rating system used by critics to rank films, with "four stars" being the highest rating. From Wikipedia.

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