Reflections on ... Nico in The Closet (1966)

 

/ Pictured: Nico and Randy Bourscheidt in The Closet (1966) by Andy Warhol /

For the month of December, author (and cutie pie) Matthew Kinlin is taking over editorship of Burning House Press online, seeking "baroque fantasies, imaginary interviews, dream fragments, incantations, maps, fiction, essays and harlequin nightmares" on the theme My Heart is Empty: Responses to the Life and Work of Nico. And - considering the wraith-cheekboned, heroin-ravaged Moon Goddess is my all-time favourite singer - boy, was I flattered to be invited to contribute! In this short essay, I reflect on Nico’s first-ever appearance in a Warhol film, The Closet (1966) (pictured). Want to contribute to My Heart is Empty? Email guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Reflections on ... Nico in Strip-tease (1963)

 

/ Pic above via /

In June 2025, I screened Strip-tease at my monthly Lobotomy Room film club. As I put it on the event page:  

"Join us on Thursday 19 June, when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room film club at Fontaine’s (committed to cinematic perversity!) whisks you away to early 1960s Paris with Strip-tease (1963)! Note that this film is in French (ooh la la!) and will be subtitled (so bring your reading glasses!). This one (directed by Jacques Poitrenaud) should be catnip for cult cinema connoisseurs. For one thing, it stars Nico. Yes, that Nico! Strip-tease follows the German diva’s earlier vivid appearance in Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), but it captures her a good few years before she became a Warhol superstar and the Velvet Underground’s chanteuse. (For some reason lost in the mists of time, she’s billed as “Krista Nico” – which seems to partially acknowledge her real name, Christa Paffgen. Strip-tease would be Nico’s sole starring role in a relatively mainstream film: her destiny lay in the underground cinema of Andy Warhol and her lover Philippe Garrel). And the moody finger-snappin’ cool jazz soundtrack is by Serge Gainsbourg (and he even appears in the film! The theme tune is huskily warbled by beatnik chanteuse Juliette Greco). Not without justification Strip-tease was promoted as a sexploitation flick (it was released in the US as The Sweet Skin in 1965 with the tagline “Fills the screen with more adult entertainment than you dare to expect! The intimate story of a striptease goddess!”), but more accurately it’s a stylish, melancholy melodrama. Nico plays Ariane, an idealistic ballet-trained German dancer in Paris with high-minded artistic ambitions. Out of economic necessity, Ariane reluctantly accepts a job at Le Crazy burlesque club – and soon captures the attention of a rich, louche playboy (John Sobieski). If you’ve seen Lobotomy Room’s presentations of other burlesque-themed movies like Too Hot to Handle (1960), Beat Girl (1960) and Satan in High Heels (1962), you won’t want to miss this obscure French gem!"

/ Italian movie poster for Strip-tease / 

Strip-tease is a criminally unsung and fascinating movie and boy, do I have notes. So, I had to write a blog post about it! 

In brief: Strip-tease shows Nico like you’ve never seen her before! So why have you probably never heard of this movie? Neither director Jacques Poitrenaud nor Nico herself took a lot of pride in Strip-tease. For Poitrenaud (1922 - 2005), this was probably just another assignment and he’s also seemingly not well known outside of France. (He’s certainly not a filmmaker I’m otherwise au fait with). 

Strip-tease is Nico’s sole starring role in a relatively mainstream film, but for the rest of her life, Nico never discussed it in interviews. It most definitely didn’t align with the deeply serious, austere and gloomy “Moon Goddess” image she embraced later in the sixties. BUT: within a few years after its continental debut Strip-tease was belatedly released in the US under the title The Sweet Skin (which makes it sound like a movie aimed at cannibals). In the 1995 book The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965-67 by photographer Stephen Shore, there’s a great shot of Nico standing outside The World Theatre in New York where The Sweet Skin is showing on a double bill (“2 Daring Adult Films!”) accompanied by a group of her Warhol Factory friends, so clearly she assembled them to “come see this film I made in France in the early 60s!” (See below. Left to right: John Cale, Dutch author Jan Cramer, Paul Morrissey, Nico and Gerard Malanga). The other “daring adult film” on the double bill is called The Love Statue (1965), which I’ve Googled and it sounds interesting. 

Similarly, in her lifetime Nico seemingly never mentioned that singing the bossa nova-tinged theme tune to Strip-tease (by none other than Serge Gainsbourg) was her true recording debut. (It’s always been widely assumed that the 1965 folk single “I’m Not Sayin’” was Nico’s debut). For whatever reason, Nico’s rendition was ultimately scrapped (we hear the sublime Juliette Greco huskily crooning it over the opening credits instead) and went unreleased for many decades. (It’s easy to hear online now, and Nico’s hushed, whispery singing is alluring in the tradition of The Velvet’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Femme Fatale”). 

Anyway, Strip-tease beautifully captures Nico (née Christa Päffgen, 1938 - 1988) at 24 years old. By this point, she had been modelling since the mid-1950s (by today’s standards, she’d be described as an international supermodel). Nico had already appeared (essentially playing herself, and beguilingly so) in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita in 1960. Yet to come: being discovered and adopted by Andy Warhol, joining the Velvet Underground as their resident chanteuse and then her own long, erratic musical career as a solo artist. 

We do know that Nico was serious about pursuing acting: when in New York on modeling assignments, she studied Method acting at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio (and used to claim Marilyn Monroe was in her class – something we’ll never be able to verify).   

/ Above: Nico - like you've never seen her before! /

What is relevant for Strip-tease: Nico gave birth to her only child, a son called Ari, in August 1962. (Ari Boulogne - who died in 2023 - was her son by the French mega-star Alain Delon. Delon never accepted or acknowledged paternity). Filming began in November ’62. According to Nico’s definitive biographer Richard Witts, she was sensitive about her post-natal body (and Ari was delivered by Cesarean so there was a scar to conceal). In any case, Nico looks impressively svelte in various degrees of undress in Strip-tease – almost certainly via diet pills. (Nico always claimed her introduction to drug-taking was diet pills – which in the 1950s were essentially amphetamines). Interestingly, Witts also suggests that the reason she’s billed as “Krista Nico” in the credits might be for tax reasons! 

Strip-tease was promoted – not without reason – as a sexploitation flick, but I’d argue it’s more of a romantic melodrama – and a deeply moody and stylish one. Nico portrays Ariane, a gloomily earnest German ballet dancer barely scratching out a living in Paris. (As a bonus, we see glimpses of what Paris looked like in winter 1962, especially around Pigalle. Later we see the Seine and Notre Dame at dawn in misty grey light). Just when it appears the struggling Ariane’s dreams have come true (“I had the lead in a ballet!”), they are abruptly snatched away. Due to some bad luck, Ariane is dropped from a big production – and is flat broke! 

At this low ebb, by sheer coincidence Arianne reunites with Berthe (Dany Saval), an old friend from dance school.  Under the “stripper name” Dodo Voluptuous, Berthe has been raking it in as an exotic dancer at a high-end burlesque joint called Le Crazy – and she urges Ariane to consider it. “I could never be a stripper,” the idealistic Ariane protests. “It’s not the money; I just couldn’t do it!” If not an actual beatnik, Ariane is “beatnik-adjacent” and is a habitué of the smoke-filled Blue Note jazz cellar, where she seeks the counsel of her confidant and adopted father figure, African American jazz musician Sam (played by Joe Turner, but NOT “Big Joe Turner” as sometimes implied online – that’s someone else entirely). The worldly-wise and protective Sam is wary of her taking the job at Le Crazy. (As mentioned earlier, Strip-tease’s stunning cool jazz and Latin exotica soundtrack is by the young Serge Gainsbourg – and we even get a fleeting glimpse of him smoking and playing piano at the Blue Note). 

Nonetheless, needs must and soon Ariane is auditioning at Le Crazy. She may be a trained ballerina, but as an exotic dancer she is stiff, self-conscious and uncertain. (Nico was many things, but she was not a dancer and it’s fun to see how Poitrenaud attempts to conceal this). Interestingly, throughout Strip-tease other characters offer meta-critiques of Nico’s performance: “You walk like a marble statue!” “You’re hard to read …” and most significantly, “She’s wooden!” The latter comment leads to a unique gimmick for Ariane’s stage act – she’s partnered with a lookalike wooden marionette. (Strip-tease has a weird emphasis on marionettes). 

/ Pic above via /

/ Pic above via /

Le Crazy has a packed house for the big unveiling of its new starlet, but Ariane is a reluctant, conflicted “strip-teaseuse” who hates being stared at and at the climax, she stops short of baring all. (There’s an eerie moment where her lookalike marionette seemingly makes eye contact with Ariane and silently judges her). Rather than being disappointed, Le Crazy’s clientele finds her shyness adorable, declaring “Very charming!” “What style!” and “Post-modern striptease!” Le Crazy’s owner Paul (played by Thierry Thibault) is thrilled by Ariane’s reception: “Do the same thing every night!” 

/ Pic above via /

(One fascinating aspect to note here: we see ample burlesque sequences of Le Crazy’s performers onstage with copious boobage and buttage on display, but these scenes are deliberately designed to be easily deleted or censored if required depending on the local market without disrupting the narrative). 

Within no time, Ariane is a nightlife sensation in Paris. Pierre (Italian actor Umberto Orsini), an associate from the ballet troupe, discovers Ariane’s current workplace, assumes she’s “easy” now and turns ugly, sneering, “Can’t be too choosy in the work you do. I’m as good as all the others …” More happily, one night Ariane encounters impossibly pretty playboy Jean-Loup (played by Jean Sobieski, who I also know from the bizarre 1968 Italian giallo Death Laid an Egg and who possesses sapphire blue eyes Paul Newman himself would envy) and they embark on a love affair. 

/ Pic above via / 

“You’re a very complicated girl,” manipulative Jean-Loup sweet-talks Ariane. “Et alors?” (So what?) she shrugs. “There’s a sadness about you. That’s what attracted me,” Jean-Loup continues. But alarmingly, he also confesses, “I’m naturally cowardly. A bit of a liar.” “Poor little rich boy,” Ariane chides. Later, Jean-Loup – who’s never worked a day in his life - patronizes Ariane by saying, “It’s good that you work. Work is ennobling. Even if it’s stripping.”  The sight of Jean-Loup and his jaded idle rich entourage of chic nightclubbing friends smoking and drinking cocktails, in formal evening wear can’t help but help but overlap with Fellini’s La dolce vita. (As Poitrenaud summarized in the 8 December 1962 issue of La Cinematographie Francaise, Strip-tease is “a film with two main themes: the solitude of a beautiful girl, one is who vulnerable and foreign, but also the life of Paris between midnight and morning, the life of those that fritter their existence away”). 

Strip-tease adopts an almost soap opera tone as their romance deepens. There’s a misunderstanding when Ariane insists that she can’t be “bought” with a diamond brooch that Jean-Loup attempts to gift her. “You’ve got it all and yet you’re as lost and lonely as me,” she consoles him after they reconcile. We see a campy whirlwind “date montage” representing their sojourns together: hunting weekend. Racecourse. Nightclubbing. Ariane’s birthday party scene feels overtly autobiographical for Nico. Like Nico, Ariane is from Cologne. They are both German women living in Paris and were children during World War II. Talk of fireworks makes Ariane reflect on the dropping of bombs (“Cologne in flames … I lost my parents that night …”). Jean-Loup gives her a mink coat: “Take this as reparations …” Later, we see Jean-Loup and Ariane in his car. She is swathed in her new mink and lighting a cigarette with hands gloved in black leather. It’s an impossibly chic image, sleek, fetishistic and almost kinky, worthy of Helmut Newton. 

/ Pic above via /

/ Pic above via /

/ Pic above via / 

Ariane continues her ascent to stardom. (Watch for her very strange new burlesque routine wearing a harsh jet-black bouffant wig). Sam is concerned Ariane is being corrupted and has forgotten her ballet aspirations. Ominously, Jean-Loup takes Ariane home to meet his aristocratic old money family ... Will Ariane come to her senses and swap the mink for the modest old cloth trench coat she was wearing at the beginning? No spoilers, but in the finale of Strip-tease, Ariane’s number is like Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” routine in reverse … I’ll say no more! 

/ Doesn’t Nico resemble Italian actress Silvana Mangano here with the black wig? (In fact, Nico and Mangano were friends; Nico credits Mangano for Federico Fellini casting her in his 1960 masterpiece La dolce vita. But that’s just one of many theories – others have claimed it was via Nico’s friendship with Anouk Aimee! There are MANY myths surrounding the eternally enigmatic Nico) /

/ Pic above and below via /

And what of Nico’s acting? “Her acting is only fair – she moves stiffly, a simple wave goodbye seems difficult, as if she’s never done it before,” Don Stradley – not inaccurately - assesses in his This Dazzling Time blog in 2016. I’d argue her approach is hesitant, remote, ethereal and inscrutable in the tradition of Kim Novak. At some points, Nico is so detached she suggests a gorgeous sleepwalker. Maybe she’s more of a presence than a conventional actress. Unsurprisingly, Nico communicates best in spectacular close-ups. Crying perfect crystal tear drops, she suggests an idealized illustration of a woman, like “Crying Girl” by Roy Lichtenstein. (Nico was already pop art even before Warhol!). Revealingly, her finest acting moment is entirely wordless. For a laugh, Jean-Loup and his parasitic friends go slumming at a low-down dive, very different from Le Crazy. The resident stripper gyrating onstage is older, rougher, raunchier, fleshier. “It takes genius to be so disgusting …” Jean-Loup sneers, almost admiringly. Ariane silently listens and absorbs his contempt in a giant hypnotic close-up that moves ever closer until Nico’s features fill the screen. The moment is akin to the famous close-ups of Nico’s spiritual godmothers Greta Garbo (especially at the end of Queen Christina (1933)) and Marlene Dietrich (especially at the end of Morocco (1930)), in which the viewer is invited to contemplate their exquisite faces and attempt to unravel their mystery. 

In cinematic terms, Nico’s contribution was to bridge the gap between the glamour of classic Hollywood and the avant-garde. She casts a melancholy spell over Strip-tease.  

Reflections on ... Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi

 / The woman behind Vampira: Maila Nurmi photographed at the Seventh Primetime Emmy Awards on 7 March 1955 at the Moulin Rouge nightclub in Los Angeles. As her biographer Sandra Niemi recalls, "She wore an ice-blue evening gown, her hair dyed to match, and a rented fur stole draped around her shoulders." /

My ruminations after reading the 2020 biography Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi by Sandra Niemi. 

First, some caveats about this account of the life and times of wraith-cheekboned atomic-era horror movie hostess, pin-up model and actress Vampira (aka Maila Nurmi, 1922 - 2008). That title is unwieldy. The misjudged cover design is offputtingly amateurish. The prose would have benefited from the hand of a professional ghost writer. Author Sandra Niemi (Maila Nurmi’s niece-turned-biographer) frequently gets bogged-down in minutiae, especially (and perhaps understandably) when it comes to the Niemi family history. (A quick explanation: Maila Nurmi’s real name was Maila Elizabeth Niemi). All you really need to know about Nurmi’s origins is that she emerged from a poor family of Finnish immigrants, with a deeply conservative and disapproving father and an alcoholic mother. 

But stick with Glamour Ghoul. It’s clearly a labour of love and ultimately a gripping account of an eccentric and tenacious survivor (some might say “failure”) who existed on the fringes of Hollywood for decades. Like the doomed Barbara Payton or her one-time director Ed Wood Jr, Nurmi endured obscurity and grinding abject poverty for most of her life. Yes, The Vampira Show on KABC-TV in Los Angeles rocketed her to fame and made her a pop culture sensation, but that success was ephemeral (her show was only on air between 1954 -1955) and Nurmi never made a cent even at her fleeting apex. 

When The Vampira Show was abruptly cancelled following a dispute with the broadcasters, Nurmi’s career dramatically fizzled-out and never recovered. She also alienated many by seemingly exploiting for publicity her friendship with James Dean following his death in 1955. By the time Nurmi appeared in Plan 9 from Outer Space she was widely considered washed-up and a show business pariah. All her scenes were filmed in one day, she was paid a grand total of $200 for her performance (the union minimum) and she was presumably glad to get it.

Plus, the volatile Nurmi was nuts and self-sabotaging, burning bridges and making terrible career decisions at every turn. (Boy, did Nurmi need good management and financial advice). It also didn’t help that she lost her health and looks early. While still in her forties Nurmi was struck down with the debilitating autoimmune disease pernicious anemia. The side effects included losing many of her teeth and meant she walked with a cane for rest of her life. Niemi speculates her aunt’s illness was caused by malnutrition, partly from sheer poverty and partly from Nurmi starving herself to maintain the freakily emaciated 19" waist that was an essential component of the Vampira image. (By today's standards, we'd say Nurmi had an eating disorder).  

/ Kim Novak and Vampira /

Nurmi was terminally unlucky in love, too - with one exception. God knows Marlon Brando was a messy, complicated and deeply flawed person but he was a rare savior in Nurmi’s life. To his credit, once their brief romance cooled, they remained long-term platonic friends and he just about kept Nurmi afloat in later years by paying her a modest allowance. (Brando did eventually cut her off, though). Otherwise Nurmi’s taste in men (with a preference for younger pretty boys) was disastrous. (Interestingly, she clashed with powerful gay agent and “the man who invented Rock Hudson” Henry Willson: they liked the same type). While Niemi herself never comes to this conclusion, it’s clear Nurmi either possessed defective “gaydar” or was primarily sexually attracted to unavailable gay men. For example, she was obsessed with the manipulative and sexually ambivalent young Antony Perkins and seethed with frustration that he didn't return her ardor. 

If Brando was the hero, then Orson Welles was the villain of Nurmi’s life. She first encountered him aged 18 when she arrived in Hollywood in 1940 in pursuit of stardom. Welles took the naïve starlet’s virginity – and impregnated her. Unfortunately for Nurmi, he was engaged to Rita Hayworth at the time.  After Welles callously abandoned her, the baby boy was quietly put up for adoption. Once Niemi uncovers this long-suppressed family secret, she commits herself to locating and contacting the long-lost son of Orson Welles and Vampira. (Did she succeed? I won’t spoil it. You’ll have to read the book). 

On a lighter note, in 1956 Nurmi enjoyed a short-lived fling with 21-year-old Elvis Presley in Las Vegas. At the time, Nurmi was guest starring in Liberace’s spectacular revue at The Riviera and the embryonic Elvis was bombing nightly to hostile audiences at The New Frontier. Recognizing a kindred spirit, Nurmi was initially dazzled by the rockabilly hepcat’s rebel style (she admired his turquoise dinner jacket and noted, “Never before had I seen a straight man … and I assumed he was … wear eye shadow and eyeliner and was that mascara as well?”). But she was bluntly critical of his sexual expertise (“he made love like an adolescent”) and their relationship ended abruptly one night when in a fit of pique (Elvis was paying her insufficient attention), Nurmi - in her own words - “grabbed his pee-pee in a public place and he never forgave me.” But never mind that. Imagine the hallucinatory trio of Vampira, Liberace and Elvis hanging out together in Las Vegas in the fifties. The mind reels! 

/ Above: Liberace and Vampira /

/ Above: Maila Nurmi with an adorable young Elvis in Las Vegas /

/ The February 1956 issue of gossip magazine Whisper via /

The other essential male presence in Nurmi’s life, of course, was her friend James Dean. They met when she was 31 (and finally finding belated success on television as Vampira after years on the margins) and he was still an unknown 23-year-old actor on the ascent. Just how intimate they were is contested (some Dean biographers argue Nurmi embellished their friendship). Niemi takes her aunt’s version as gospel (and doesn’t question Nurmi’s claims that Dean’s ghost repeatedly contacted her from beyond the grave). For what it’s worth, on the topic of Dean’s much-debated sexuality, Nurmi was succinct: “At the time I knew him, he was seeing women, but he was basically bisexual.” 

In her later years, with considerable justification Nurmi sued Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) for copyright infringement. (Nurmi lost, even though she had an overwhelmingly persuasive case. If – like me – you revere both Vampira and Elvira, the chapter about how Nurmi got swindled makes for painful reading. Nurmi was frail and destitute at the time, while the savvy Peterson would go on to amass a fortune from Elvira merchandise. We’ll inevitably get Peterson’s side of the dispute when her impending memoirs come out in September 2021). 

/ Maila Nurmi as a beatnik poetess (with a pet rat) in The Beat Generation (1959) /

More happily, in the seventies and eighties Nurmi would be embraced by her spiritual offspring, punk musicians, particularly the bands inspired by lowbrow culture and horror b-movie imagery like The Misfits, The Screamers, The Damned, The Cramps and surf band Satan’s Cheerleaders (Nurmi recorded several tracks with the latter, which you can listen to on YouTube). Nurmi herself was obviously a punk ahead of her time. One thing Glamour Ghoul clarifies: there are some startling photos circulating online of a virtually bald Nurmi in the fifties sans the Vampira wig with brutally shorn hair, seemingly anticipating punk by about twenty years. Out of Vampira drag, Nurmi favoured a low-maintenance beatnik look of cropped-short blonde hair, Capri pants, sandals and shapeless sweaters. (You get a good impression of what the real Nurmi looked like in her cameo appearance as a beatnik poetess in 1959 film The Beat Generation). Niemi explains that when Nurmi’s stormy marriage to screenwriter Dean Riesner broke down, she chopped all her hair off in a bout of depression. 

/ Maila Nurmi sans the trademark Vampira wig, 1955 / 

/ Above: Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of The Cramps. Note Lux's t-shirt - original Vampira merchandise that Nurmi made herself and sold at public appearances in the punk era. In 2015 I managed to pick up a reproduction of this t-shirt at Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender, and I wear it with pride! /

/ Above: Vampira and Tor Johnson in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) /

/ Above with Edward D Wood Jr in 1955 /

Weirdly, Niemi seems to skim over some intriguing aspects of Nurmi’s life and career. She doesn’t offer much insight into Nurmi’s participation in Ed Wood’s notorious 1959 sci-fi atrocity Plan 9 from Outer Space (to be fair, that’s been extensively documented elsewhere). We don’t glean much about how Nurmi came to be the live action model for the animated evil queen Maleficent in the 1959 Disney classic Sleeping Beauty. And I’d read elsewhere that Tim Burton exploited Nurmi badly when he made his 1994 biopic Ed Wood. If so, Niemi doesn’t mention it. 

While Niemi strives to present her aunt in a sympathetic light, Nurmi doesn’t always emerge as terribly likable. Many of her career disappointments were self-inflicted. In the forties director Howard Hawks wanted to groom Nurmi for stardom as his next protegee (as he’d recently triumphantly done with Lauren Bacall). Nurmi scuppered that opportunity by flouncing off in a huff, complaining Hawks was taking too long. She also rarely had a good word to say about other women.  Consider Nurmi’s scathing assessment of  fiftysomething Mae West (one of Nurmi’s first acting breaks was appearing onstage in West’s 1944 play Catherine Was Great). “I saw that her movie star stature was only an illusion of the camera. She was really a tiny little biscuit of a girl. She wore an Aunt Jemima scarf tied round her weary peroxided hair and walked on tall awkward platform shoes. She wore a faded peignoir that likely began its life as pink but had since greyed with age. The garment was cut on the bias, revealing a surprisingly buoyant cleavage even as her pot belly gave away her age. She wore no makeup save for a huge pair of black nylon eyelashes. I didn’t understand why a purported legend could not afford a new bathrobe.” 

Adopting the morbidly beautiful Vampira persona never made Nurmi rich or assured her stardom – but it gave her immortality. Still vivid, cartoon-ish, sexy and perverse, the irresistible image she created never grows stale, appealing to b-movie connoisseurs, punks, psychobillies, goths and the fetish subculture (with her extreme waist-cinching, Nurmi was a pioneer in body modification). And remember: at the time, she was perceived as a gimmick or one-woman publicity stunt. Decades later, Nurmi’s cadaverous cutie still haunts popular culture. The spell Vampira cast is seemingly eternal.

Further reading:

My analysis of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

Reflections on ... Nico, 1988 (2017)

/ Trine Dryholm as gloomy punk diva Nico in the biopic Nico, 1988 /

My quick reflections on Nico, 1988, the 2017 biopic about the chain-smoking, heroin-ravaged and wraith-cheekboned German punk chanteuse Nico (1938 – 1988) starring Danish actress Trine Dryholm and directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli. As the title suggests, the movie focuses on the final year of the down-on-her-luck former Warhol Superstar's life, when she was touring the dives of Europe doing desultory concerts. (I streamed it on More4 Saturday night. If you’re curious to see it, don’t delay – it’s going to get deleted from the platform soon!).

 / The actual Nico photographed in the late eighties towards the end of her life /

I’ve been a Nico obsessive since I was a teenager, but I approached the film with an open mind. (It received a decidedly mixed reception). Good or bad, for me Nico, 1988 was bound to be fascinating.

What mainly struck a wrong note for me: when Nico angrily snaps at a journalist, “Don’t call me Nico. Call me by my real name – Christa!” The film seemingly implies she resented the persona of “Nico” being imposed on her and yearned to return to her “true self” Christa again. But I’ve never read anything to support this assertion and doubt Nico ever said it. It was her mentor the German fashion photographer Herbert Tobias who first bestowed the mononym “Nico” on her in the fifties when she was a 16-year old model and she kept it for the rest of her life. From what I’ve gathered, she disliked her real name (Christa Päffgen) anyway, feeling it was bourgeois and “too German” and preferred the air of mystery and androgyny that “Nico” provided.

 / Teenage fashion model Nico photographed in 1956 by Herbert Tobias - the photographer who first nicknamed her "Nico" /

The script crams-in lots of awkward exposition (like Nico bringing-up the subject of her childhood, for example, or that her son Ari was fathered by actor Alain Delon) in an unnatural way to fill-in the gaps. Nico, 1988 frequently displays a shaky and selective grasp of the facts. (Which is true of all biopics, to be fair).

/ Trine Dryholm as Nico /

According to the script, Nico spoke in “profound” show business platitudes (“I’ve been on the top. I’ve been on the bottom. Both places are empty”) worthy of Helen Lawson or Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls.

/ Pop Art "girl of the moment" Nico in the sixties when she was the chanteuse for Andy Warhol's house band The Velvet Underground /

The film uncritically buys into the popular cliché that Nico “deliberately” made herself ugly later in life (“Am I ugly? Good! I wasn’t happy when I was beautiful”). Nico was always deeply image-conscious, there’s no shortage of examples of her on the record fretting about gaining weight, and for someone “unconcerned” about her appearance Nico was remarkably devoted to black eyeliner and mascara right to the end.

/ Embodiment of ruined glamour: Nico - wreathed in cigarette smoke - onstage in the eighties /  

Nico’s touring band contains a female Romanian violinist called Sylvia. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Nico’s backing group ever featured a female musician (she was notorious for her antipathy towards other women). There’s a half-hearted fabricated subplot about a doomed romance between Sylvia and another of Nico’s heroin-addicted musicians which seems to get dropped mid-way through. This creates the impression Nicchiarelli was unsure if Nico’s own story sufficiently was interesting.

/ Director Susanna Nicchiarelli and leading lady Trine Dryholm /

When Nico embarks on her final, fatal bicycle journey in Ibiza on that fateful day in July 1988 (en route to buy marijuana, she suffers a heart attack, crashes her bike and dies of a cerebral hemorrhage), she should be seen winding a black scarf around her head first. Filmmaker Paul Morrissey would later rail something like it was “those damn black rags” Nico insisted on wearing that caused her death.

Actually, the sartorial styling is always a bit “off”: Nico’s sunglasses should be butch mirrored aviators.  She should be sporting a keffiyeh scarf. They still depict Nico wearing the long brown boots she was wearing around the time of her Marble Index album in the late sixties. By the eighties, Nico had long since discarded them for black leather motorcycle boots, always left unbuckled. To their credit, the signature punk-y skull-studded black leather wristband Nico wore in the eighties is well represented.

/ The skull wristband! Worn by the actual Nico (above) and Dryholm (below) /

There are some inexplicable musical choices. I can possibly understand why Nico is depicted huskily warbling Nat King Cole’s "Nature Boy” in a hotel lobby backed by jazz musicians in Italy. She recorded the jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” on her final album in 1985. Maybe they couldn’t afford the rights to that song? But why does Dryholm croon the 1984 single “Big in Japan” by Alphaville over the closing credits? It has zero connection with Nico.

/ Trine Dryholm as Nico /

At its weakest, Nico, 1988 sometimes looks and feels like a French and Saunders parody. There could have been more moments of absurd black tragi-comedy. Dryholm never quite nails the cadaverous and macabre Morticia Addams-like aspect of Nico’s demeanor. She should have been even more perverse, morbid and inscrutable! But maybe Nicchiarelli feared that would make her unsympathetic?

 / Zombie Queen: a wraith-like Nico photographed in the Italian magazine Ciao in 1981 / 

What the makers of Nico, 1988 got right:  

Nico’s grubby indifference to hygiene (her former lovers recall she preferred spraying herself with perfume rather than bathing). “Don’t worry, sir,” Nico explains to her new landlord in Manchester when he explains how the boiler works. “I take showers very rarely.”

Sandor Funtek is perfectly cast as Ari (Nico’s profoundly troubled son) and his scenes with Dryholm (when Nico belatedly attempts to compensate for her prolonged absences during his childhood) are moving. They even got the birthmark on his forehead right!

 / Dryholm as Nico and Funtek as Ari ... /

/ ... and the real deal / 

In truth, Dryholm never really resembles Nico (she looks more like Helen Mirren. Or as Variety’s critic puts it, she “looks like a long-black-haired, coldly fierce erotic-zombie version of Roseanne Barr”). Nor does she attempt to emulate Nico’s inimitable Germanic vampire priestess Voice of Doom. But you can’t fault her intensely committed, starkly unglamorous portrayal and her re-interpretations of Nico’s songs are powerful. And Dryholm intermittently captures Nico’s Night of the Living Dead thousand-yard death glare. I especially liked the wired and jittery soundcheck performance of “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”

Ultimately, Nico, 1988 is a sympathetic and well-intentioned low budget labour of love and a noble enterprise for both Nicchiarelli and Dryholm. Let’s face it: it’s impressive Nico, 1988 even got made. If this biopic leads to anyone discovering Nico’s haunting and uncompromised musical vision, that can only be a good thing.  

/ Nico towards the end of her life /




Further reading:

I’ve blogged about the Nico - the Marlene Dietrich of punk / Edith Piaf of the Blank Generation - many times: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; and When Patti Smith Met Nico; Nico's influence on Leonard Cohen.