Nico - Icon

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Engrossing documentary of a tragic and artistically underrated icon

Nico - Icon

Manufacturer: Quantum Leap
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 9054691549
Release Date: 2006-05-30

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Engrossing documentary of a tragic and artistically underrated icon.......2007-11-26

Nico - she must have known her assumed name was an anagram of 'icon', but from what I have read about her she probably wouldn't have cared - is perhaps best known for being a muse to famous men (e.g. a superstar in Andy Warhol's "flying circus", the inspiration for Lou Reed's 'I'll be your mirror' and 'Femme Fatale') and for her affairs with Jim Morrison (whom she calls "my soul brother"), Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and French actor Alain Delon. Her beauty, too, was legendary: at 16 she was already appearing on the catwalks of London, Paris and Rome; obituaries headlined her as "the siren of the Sixties". Warhol famously called her a "moon goddess" and Reed a "death angel" - both are characterisations which lift her out of the human realm and pedestal her in a celestial one.

Less widely known is Nico the songwriter, the serious and sincere artist steeped in expressions of macabre, derelict emotions. It is for this reason that German director Susanne Ofteringer wanted to make this documentary - as an attempt to redress the imbalance by viewing Nico through the prism of her talents: "I thought she was worth remembering for her own work, and that's how I convinced people to collaborate with the film." Ofteringer charts Nico's development from working as a model under her birth name Christa Päffgen, to being an actress in New York (starring in Fellini's La Dolce Vita in 1960) to joining Andy Warhol's Factory and the Velvet Underground in 1965. Nico's solo career took flight in 1966 upon the release of her first solo album Chelsea Girl; six morbid-melancholic albums were to follow before her premature death from a cerebral hemorrhage in Ibiza in 1988.

Many interviewees included here - ex-Velvet John Cale, her former manager Alan Wise, Viva (a Factory cohort) and James Young (who was her keyboardist in the 1980s) - recall a taciturn, utterly captivating and thoroughly individual woman. Some recall violence (her former boyfriend Lutz Ulbrich admits to physical fights with her, during one of them she hit him over the head with an iron); some remember a junked-out hellraiser (Young recalls her casually handing him a bag full of syringes as they walked towards custom officials at the border). "All the people I talked to," says Ofteringer, "had been really badly hurt by her in one way or another. But they all still loved her in a way. It's strange how someone can have an impact like that." The three interviews with family members are the most touching in this respect. When hearing Nico's intense, Germanic singing, tears well up in the eyes of her aunt, Helma Wolff, who was like a second mother to Nico (her father died when she was four, apparently shot by the Gestapo): "I can feel this music, you know. It is how she was - dreamy and effusive, seeing something that is not there". Edith Boulogne, who brought up Nico's only child and who died not long after the documentary was finished, expresses bewilderment at Nico's neglect of her son, but nevertheless admired her. That son, Ari Boulogne, who also became a heroin addict and must have suffered the most in this tragic trajectory, makes an entrance at the very end, lovingly calling his mother "a true gypsy" and insisting on her being remembered as an artist.

This fascinating documentary doesn't clear up all the mysteries (how could it? Who can claim to know anyone absolutely?). Although Nico's desire to nullify her own beauty by letting her teeth rot, dying her hair unflattering colours and scarring her body with heroin tracks is repeatedly mentioned, the deeper psychological motives are not elaborated upon. She apparently rejoiced at being called ugly - perhaps feeling relief that her inner trauma could be recognised in her appearance at last. Her self-hatred and irrepressible death-wish were finally becoming visible. She was, perhaps, becoming 'one': not a moon goddess nor a death angel, but a real artist expressing real confusion and real pain. The lines written by Nico and sung at the piano by John Cale as the final credits roll can't fail to haunt: "Into numberless reflections / Rises a smile from your eyes into mine / Frozen warnings close to mine / Close to the frozen borderline..."

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Nico Icon [1995]
Starring: Nico , Christian Aaron Boulogne , Tina Aumont , Edith Boulogne , and Jackson Browne
Director: Susanne Ofteringer
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 1572522194
Release Date: 1998-01-14

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Manufacturer: Entertaining Fitness
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000EDWL5A
Release Date: 2006-05-02