A new film shows the dark side of pop art icon Nico, a singer and Andy Warhol's muse. Nico, 1988 depicts the tormented final years of the German-born model's life.
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Nico: Supermodel, singer and reluctant muse
Nico wanted to be seen as an independent artist, yet her road to fame was always brought her back to members of the artistic elite.
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Appreciating a pop icon
Supermodel, singer, muse: Christa Päffgen, aka Nico, was a pop icon of the 1960s and 70s. The film Nico, 1988 is released on the 30th anniversary of her death. On July 18, 1988, Päffgen died of a ruptured aneurysm at the age of 49, after falling from her bicycle.
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A challenging role
Danish actress Trine Dyrholm plays Nico in the film, tracing the icon's tragic decline. Dyrholm won the Silver Bear award at the Berlinale film festival in 2016 for her role in The Commune. In Nico, 1988, the actress sing's Nico's lyrics herself, a considerable feat considering the late-singers unpredictable vocal style.
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Glamour und darkness
Christa Päffgen (here portayed by Trine Dyrholm) was born in Cologne in 1938, and was discovered in Berlin as a teenager. At age 16, she moved to Paris to model, and became known as "Nico." She struggled with her beauty and later happily accepted her physical decline, which was helped along by years of drug abuse. Nico's life oscillated between glamour and gloom and included numerous love affairs.
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The father of her child?
Nico called French actor Alain Delon the "most beautiful man in the world." In 1962, at the age of 24, she gave birth to his son, Ari. However, Delon did not recognize the paternity and Nico returned to her wild life in New York, which was not fit for a child. Her ailing mother took care of Ari before Delon's mother became responsible for his education, allegedly kidnapping him to do so.
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A famous mentor
In 1964, Nico met Bob Dylan in London, who was then working on his fourth album Another Side. Dylan supported Nico's first music-making attempts, including the song "I'll keep it with mine," which appeared on her first solo album in 1968.
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A New York patron
In the early 1960s, Nico met artist Andy Warhol in New York. He later said she looked like she had come across the Atlantic at the bow of a Viking ship. Nico was a regular at his studio, the "Factory", where artists and high society mixed and mingled. This is where Warhol connected Nico with The Velvet Underground.
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A love affair with Lou Reed
Nico also had a steamy affair with Velvet Underground front-man Lou Reed. In addition to their private dalliance, Reed and Nico worked together on the band's first album. At the time, it was a commercial flop, but it went on to be considered a foundation of experimental rock.
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The famous banana
Released in 1967, The Velvet Underground & Nico was the first album by Lou Reed and John Cale's band. Andy Warhol designed the cover and produced the music. It is now known as the "banana album" and touches on topics such as consumerism and drug addiction. Such themes were present throughout Nico's life. She left the band after the first album was released.
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The art of self-destruction
The muse of X, the girlfriend of Y – although Nico is said to have had affairs with just about every well-known New York high-society artist in the late 1960s, she wanted to be seen as an independent person. She escaped her looks by destroying them through years of drug abuse.
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Christa Päffgen was born in 1938 in Cologne, Germany. Following the Second World War she grew up in Berlin. At age 16 she began modeling for magazines in Paris and was given the stage name Nico by a photographer. With her new moniker, she moved to New York, plunging into a world free from constraints and borders.
Nico, 1972: The former model turned gloomy. Her album The End ... was promoted by the record company with the question: 'Why commit suicide if you can buy this record?'Image: picture-alliance/Ewa Rudling/TT
The biographical film Nico, 1988 presents the shards of what remained of the glorious decades before Nico's death in 1988. The film shows the model in her last year, marked by years of drug abuse and struggling to be recognized as an independent artist. Emancipation was her goal – she desperately sought to break free from the structures of her past. Although her life may have appeared unconstrained to many, she looked back on it as superficial and stifling.
Nico is considered to be one of the first supermodels and a pioneer of punk and goth. She called countless well-known men her lovers, and allegedly had a son with French sex symbol Alain Delon. She famously became a muse of New York artist Andy Warhol. In his "Factory" studio she met the likes of Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and Lou Reed. She is sometimes referred to as an actress, mainly due to a performance in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, in which she briefly plays herself. Is that how a self-determined person wants to define themselves? That is something she would ask herself over and over again.
Aiming to break out of a world defined by beauty, she finds an ally: heroin. The opioid changes her appearance dramatically, which helps her to move on from her celebrated beauty. Physical decay is what she desired. In one scene of the film, Nico, played by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm, sits in front of a mirror and says: "Am I ugly? Good, I was not happy when I was beautiful."
'Am I ugly?' asks Nico in the film. She longed to be freed from her beauty. Image: Film Kino Text/E. Scarpa
Not looking for sympathy
In the film, Nico is not portrayed as a fallen angel, but rather as an unlikeable figure. She is shown with her son Ari, whose paternity Delon has never recognized. Although he is only a small child, he accompanies his mother to parties in New York where drugs lay absentmindedly on tables. Ari was eventually raised by Delon's mother, but when he returned to Nico at age 19, she introduced him to heroin, even sharing syringes with him.
Nico sang on Velvet Underground's debut album in the late 1960s and then recorded six solo albums, including Chelsea Girl (1967). But by the 1980s she was appearing only on small stages, and often berated her band in front of the audience. Her morbid lyrics eventually earned her the nickname "priestess of darkness." She no longer wanted to be Nico, and longed to be called Christa again.
Leading actress Dyrholm and Italian director Susanna Nicchiarelli resist the temptation to generate sympathy for the protagonist. The atmosphere of the film is dark and drab, standing in strong contrast to the colorful world of high society that Nico once inhabited. Dyrholm sang all the passages herself – a considerable challenge considering her inconsistent vocals and challenging German accent.
Nico, 1988 opens in German cinemas on 18 July. The date marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the artist who passed away aged 49 on 18 July 1988 after a bicycle accident in Ibiza.
