''Christiane F.'' (german: Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, italic=yes, ) is a 1981 German
biographical
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film directed by
Uli Edel
Ulrich "Uli" Edel (; born 11 April 1947) is a German film and television director, best known for his work on films such as Last Exit to Brooklyn (film), ''Last Exit to Brooklyn'' and ''Body of Evidence (1993 film), Body of Evidence.''
His ''Ra ...
that portrays the descent of
Christiane Felscherinow
Christiane Vera Felscherinow (born 20 May 1962) is a German actress and musician who is best known for her contribution to the 1978 autobiographical book ''Christiane F.'' (original title: ), and the film and television miniseries based on the ...
, a bored 13-year-old growing up in mid-1970s
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
, to a 14-year-old heroin addict. Based on the 1978
non-fiction
Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...
book ''Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo'' (''We Children from
Zoo Station''), transcribed and edited from tape recordings by
and Horst Rieck, the film immediately acquired
cult status
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
and features
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
as both composer and as himself. In 2013, Felscherinow published her autobiography ''Christiane F. – My Second Life''.
Plot
Thirteen-year-old
Christiane Felscherinow
Christiane Vera Felscherinow (born 20 May 1962) is a German actress and musician who is best known for her contribution to the 1978 autobiographical book ''Christiane F.'' (original title: ), and the film and television miniseries based on the ...
lives with her mother, younger sister, and her pet cat in their small apartment in an unkempt multi-storey, concrete
social-housing building in a dull neighbourhood on the outskirts of
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
. She is tired of living there and is a huge fan of
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
. She hears of Sound, a new trending nightclub in the city's centre. Although she is not old enough to get in, she dresses up in high heels and make-up, and asks a popular school friend, Kessi, who goes there regularly, to take her. Kessi also provides her with pills. At the club, she meets a slightly older boy named Detlev, who is part of a clique where everybody uses various types of drugs. The next morning, Christiane and Kessi are waiting for the subway when Kessi's mother finds them and angrily berates Kessi, grabbing her by the arm and telling Christiane to stay away from her daughter.
Christiane starts taking
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
, in addition to abusing pills, and befriends a girl her age named Babsi. After a David Bowie concert, Christiane tries
heroin
Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brow ...
for the first time. As she falls in love with Detlev, Christiane begins using heroin on a regular basis in order to be close to him, gradually becoming more and more dependent on the drug until she is a full-blown
addict. After her 14th birthday, Christiane stops going home and spends more and more time at her cohorts' unkempt apartment; she is also drawn to
Bahnhof Zoo
Berlin Zoologischer Garten station (german: Bahnhof Berlin Zoologischer Garten, colloquially Bahnhof Zoo, ) is a railway station in Berlin, Germany. It is located on the Berlin Stadtbahn railway line in the Charlottenburg district, adjacent to t ...
, a large train and subway station notorious for the drug trafficking and prostitution that takes place in its underpasses and back alleys. Christiane also starts to prostitute herself, imitating Detlev, who sells sex favours to male clients on a regular basis in order to support his heroin addiction.
After being discovered unconscious on the bathroom floor at home due to a heroin overdose, Christiane tries going
cold turkey
"Cold turkey" refers to the abrupt cessation of a substance dependence and the resulting unpleasant experience, as opposed to gradually easing the process through reduction over time or by using replacement medication.
Sudden withdrawal from dru ...
with Detlev, an excruciating experience for both of them. However, they both
relapse
In internal medicine, relapse or recidivism is a recurrence of a past (typically medical) condition. For example, multiple sclerosis and malaria often exhibit peaks of activity and sometimes very long periods of dormancy, followed by relapse or r ...
the moment they revisit Bahnhof Zoo. To fuel her addiction, Christiane steals from home, sells all her possessions, and sinks to abysmal levels. One day, Christiane and Detlev find their best friend and roommate, Axel, dead in the apartment from a fatal overdose, due to a bad batch of heroin he was sold on the streets that Detlev believes to be
strychnine
Strychnine (, , US chiefly ) is a highly toxic, colorless, bitter, crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine, when inhaled, swallowed, or absorbed through the eye ...
. Christiane and Detlev quickly run away, ending up at the apartment of one of Detlev's male clients. When Christiane walks in on the two having very loud anal intercourse, she has a breakdown and flees. She returns to the station in order to find Babsi, only to discover that she is dead of an overdose at barely 14 years old, as plastered all over the front pages of many newspapers. In despair over the deaths of numerous friends, as well as her inability to break free from her heroin addiction, Christiane tries to overdose too. A voice-over says that Christiane eventually recovered, but most of her cohorts either died or are still addicts, including Detlev, whose whereabouts and current condition are unknown.
Cast
*
Natja Brunckhorst
Natja Brunckhorst (born 26 September 1966) is a German actress, screenwriter, and director.
Brunckhorst was 13 years old when she was selected by director Uli Edel for the leading role as Christiane F. in the critically acclaimed 1981 dramatisat ...
as
Christiane F.
Christiane Vera Felscherinow (born 20 May 1962) is a German actress and musician who is best known for her contribution to the 1978 autobiographical book ''Christiane F.'' (original title: ), and the film and television miniseries based on the ...
* Thomas Haustein as Detlev
*
Jens Kuphal Jens may refer to:
* Jens (given name), a list of people with the name
* Jens (surname), a list of people
* Jens, Switzerland, a municipality
* 1719 Jens, an asteroid
See also
* Jensen (disambiguation)
* Jenssi
Joensuu (; krl, Jovensuu; ) i ...
as Axel
* Rainer Wölk as Leiche
* Jan Georg Effler as Bernd
* Christiane Reichelt as Babsi
* Daniela Jaeger as Kessi
* Kerstin Richter as Stella
*
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
as himself
* Christiane Lechle as Christiane's mother
Production
The film was shot with a low budget in 1980 and released in 1981, but set between 1975 and 1977 in
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
. It skips the beginning and the end of the book, and concentrates on the main story, starting when Christiane begins her nightlife in Berlin at around 13 years old, and stops rather abruptly after her suicide attempt by stating that she recovered. In the real story, Christiane F. never fully recovered from her addiction, nor did her troubles end with going to Hamburg to begin withdrawal.
Originally the film was going to be directed by
Roland Klick
Roland Klick (born 1934) is a German film director and screenwriter.
Biography
Klick was born in Hof, Bavaria and grew up in Nennslingen after the war. Klick studied theater and German in Munich, worked as a cameraman on a film by Rolf Schünz ...
, but he was fired only two weeks before shooting, after a fallout with
Bernd Eichinger
Bernd Eichinger (; 11 April 194924 January 2011) was a German film producer, director, and screenwriter.
Life and career
Eichinger was born in Neuburg an der Donau. He attended the University of Television and Film Munich in the 1970s and bou ...
.
Uli Edel
Ulrich "Uli" Edel (; born 11 April 1947) is a German film and television director, best known for his work on films such as Last Exit to Brooklyn (film), ''Last Exit to Brooklyn'' and ''Body of Evidence (1993 film), Body of Evidence.''
His ''Ra ...
came in to direct the film. Cinematography is bleak and dreary, depicting a dilapidated, working-class Berlin with rundown structures and dirty, blighted backdrops.
The cast is composed mainly of first-time actors, most of whom were still in school at the time and have mostly not pursued acting careers since. Natja Brunckhorst is the only cast member who continued to act in German films and television, starting with 1982's ''
Querelle
''Querelle'' is a 1982 West German-French English-language arthouse film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starring Brad Davis, adapted from French author Jean Genet's 1947 novel ''Querelle of Brest''. It was Fassbinder's last film, rel ...
'' by
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement.
Fassbinder's main ...
, at the time the highest-grossing film with a strongly homosexual theme. Real life "Stella" (Catherine Schabeck), aged 18 at the time, has a short cameo as the drug dealer that sells the first dose of heroin to Detlev. Most of the extras at the railway station and at SOUND were actual drug users and prostitutes. In the scene where Christiane runs through the alleys of the station to find Babsi, the camera lingers on several drug users leaning against the walls of the underpass. In a 2011 interview, Thomas Haustein, who played Detlev and was still in school at the time, recalled how terrified he felt being surrounded by real-life addicts, but that he was able to successfully copy their behaviour for his character. It would now be illegal to have minors act in the film's graphic shoot-up, nudity and sex scenes; at the time, however, all the production needed was a written letter of consent from the parents to proceed with filming.
The David Bowie concert featured in the film actually took place in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, with only some of the crew and cast attending, because at the time Bowie was performing on Broadway several nights a week and could not shoot in Berlin. The close-up shots of Bowie were from this New York performance, whereas the mass audience scenes were from an
AC/DC
AC/DC (stylised as ACϟDC) are an Australian Rock music, rock band formed in Sydney in 1973 by Scottish-born brothers Malcolm Young, Malcolm and Angus Young. Their music has been variously described as hard rock, blues rock, and Heavy metal ...
concert in Germany. The two were spliced together to seem as one event.
Natja Brunckhorst
Natja Brunckhorst (born 26 September 1966) is a German actress, screenwriter, and director.
Brunckhorst was 13 years old when she was selected by director Uli Edel for the leading role as Christiane F. in the critically acclaimed 1981 dramatisat ...
recalled a scene which was shot on Kurfürstenstraße where her character is standing alone waiting for someone to pick her up. "It was a long lens shot so the camera team was far away. A car drove up and I was about to get in when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, some of the crew running towards me shouting: "No! No! No!" And it came to me: this was a real guy, not an actor, trying to pick me up. I almost got into a car with someone who wanted to sleep with a 13-year-old," she said.
Reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 71% rating based on 7 reviews.
Both the film and the book acquired cult status in Europe immediately after release, raising awareness of heroin addiction. The popularity of the film was increased by
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
's participation as himself (portrayed giving a concert early in the film) and as the main contributor to the soundtrack. Bowie's music from his albums made in Berlin during 1976 and 1977 is played throughout the picture, and as he was at the peak of his popularity during the late 1970s and early 1980s, his presence helped boost the film's commercial success.
Christiane and her cohorts are seen losing consciousness in decrepit lavatory cubicles amidst urine, vomit and blood, injecting in close-ups, cleaning and re-filling syringes directly from the toilet bowl, vomiting all over themselves and falling asleep right on top of it. In one particularly disturbing scene, a junkie climbs over a public toilet stall to steal Christiane's fix, inject himself in the neck, hand back the used syringe and thank her, in front of the horrified gaze of an elderly woman. The depiction of young addicts from seemingly normal families was particularly alarming. At the time junkies were still perceived in popular culture as much older, wilder characters, such as those depicted in
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...
's ''
Easy Rider
''Easy Rider'' is a 1969 American independent drug culture road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda, and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American So ...
'' or in
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. ...
's songs. Christiane turns 14 halfway through the film, the same age as her friend Babsi, who fatally overdoses. Christiane's boyfriend in the film is 15, portrayed by a 14-year-old actor. None of their companions, two of whom also fatally overdose, are older than 16, as reported by end titles recalling the birth and death dates of the real-life individuals portrayed in the film. The fact that the characters prostitute themselves, both heterosexually and homosexually, at such a young age, revolted audiences.
The film was the most popular West German film of the year with admissions of almost 4.6 million.
Soundtrack
All songs written by
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
except "Heroes/Helden" written by Bowie/
Eno
Eno may refer to:
Music
* English National Opera, London
* ''Eno'', an album by Japanese band Polysics
* "Eno", a song by X-Wife from '' Rockin' Rio EP''
Organisations and businesses
* Eno (company), a Chinese clothing and accessories busine ...
/Maas, "Boys Keep Swinging" and "Look Back In Anger", both written by Bowie/Eno. According to the book, the real Christiane F. had had her first experience with
heroin
Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brow ...
at a David Bowie concert some years earlier; this is told in the film with David Bowie starring as himself. The concert scene was filmed in October 1980 at New York's
Hurrah nightclub, which was redressed to resemble a Berlin nightclub (Bowie was appearing nightly on Broadway at the time so director Ulrich Edel had to shoot the sequence in New York).
# "V-2 Schneider"
# "TVC 15"
# "Heroes/Helden"
# "Boys Keep Swinging"
# "Sense of Doubt"
# "Station to Station" (Live)
# "Look Back in Anger"
# "Stay"
# "Warszawa"
See also
* ''
Memento'', a novel by
Radek John
Radek John (; born 6 December 1954) is a Czech journalist, writer, screenwriter and politician who served as the Minister of Interior from 2010 to 2011 and as Leader of the Public Affairs party from 2009 to 2013. His novel '' Memento'' is the f ...
* ''
For Your Own Good'', by Dr.
Alice Miller, discusses Christiane F.'s case at length.
References
External links
*
*
Movie stills
{{DEFAULTSORT:Christiane F. (Film)
1981 films
1981 directorial debut films
1981 drama films
1981 LGBT-related films
1980s biographical drama films
1980s coming-of-age drama films
1980s teen drama films
Biographical films about children
Coming-of-age films based on actual events
Films about child prostitution
Films about heroin addiction
Films about prostitution in Germany
Films based on non-fiction books
Films directed by Uli Edel
Films produced by Bernd Eichinger
Films scored by Jürgen Knieper
Films set in Berlin
Films set in West Germany
Films shot in Berlin
German biographical drama films
German coming-of-age drama films
1980s German-language films
German LGBT-related films
German teen drama films
LGBT-related coming-of-age films
LGBT-related drama films
LGBT-related films based on actual events
1970s in West Berlin
West German films
1980s German films