The bleak music of Bowie’s collaborations with Brian Eno provides a fitting backdrop to this film, as his icy soul killer prose perfectly reflected the frozen and fragmented lives of Christiane and her gang: an “alternative family” taking respite in discos and underground train stations of 1970′s West Berlin. Removed from that context, the album is still enjoyable for the sheer quality of the songs. The cliché about David Bowie says he’s a musical chameleon, adapting himself according to fashion and trends. While such a criticism is glib, there’s no denying that Bowie demonstrated remarkable skill for perceiving musical trends at his peak in the ’70s.

The film itself is based on the testimony of a teenager (Vera Christiane Felscherinow) who gets involved in drugs at 12, hooked on heroin by 13 and a prostitute by 14 to support her habit. She became part of a notorious group of teenaged drug-users and prostitutes, mainly at the largest train station in West Berlin – Bahnof Zoo. Her story came to light after a meeting with two journalists while she was a witness in a trial against a man who paid underaged girls with heroin in return for sex. The journalists wanted to expose the problem among teenagers in Berlin which was plainly surrounded by strong taboos. Christiane provided an in-depth description of the life of drugs and prostitution that she and other teenagers in West Berlin experienced in the 1970′s. Her interviews were extensive, taking a total of 2 months to produce. A book was eventually published chronicling her life from 1975 to 1978, when she was aged 12 to 15. In 1981 the story was made into a film directed by Uli Edel. Christiane worked as an advisor on the film and much is shot on location in authentic and gloomy surroundings of Gropiusstadt and Bahnhof Zoo. The actors here are genuine teenagers, around 14 to 15 years old. This makes the film so much more powerful and shocking, and much more believable. The effects of heroin on these kids is staggering to behold; they turn into these sickly shadows of their former selves, like zombies, in search of their next fix. And strangely, Christiane and her friends never seem to enjoy the high from the heroin. You will never see such a bleak vision of kids lost in a surreal hell of drug addiction. And to add further to the intensity, the film is long, 138 minutes uncut, becoming steadily darker and seedier by the minute, until the viewer wonders just how long can this young girl go on like this without completely self-destructing. And amazingly, throughout the running time, the film never preaches, never becomes sentimental, as most American drug films often do. The film style is specifically German.

It’s interesting to note the film does not glamorize heroin, as soon as the hard drug abuse begins in the film, the mood changes entirely. The uplifting and snappy music of Bowie whom Christiane worships is heard frequently throughout the first section of the film – there is a moment of insight and revelation when Christiane goes to see Bowie in concert – where he appears as himself in the film. After her and her friends fall into heroin addiction the Bowie music symbolically disappears, to be replaced by the eerie Eno-driven sound-scapes. The atmosphere is gritty and dark, pulling no punches with its depiction of Berlin in those days. The days look dark and gloomy to begin with, as the film progresses the day resembles more and more the night. Great locations and beautiful if functional photography complete this unique, raw and graphic film. In it’s nature it completely takes away the idea of the highs and lows of the typical drug film.

Some of Bowie’s very best music is compiled here. There are the obviously cinematic tracks – the steely proto-techno glide of ‘V-2 Schneider’, the dark ambience of ‘Warszawa’ and ‘Sense Of Doubt’ – alongside the jagged pop of ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. ‘Christiane F.’ holds one fascinating rarity, too: a version of his finest song, ‘Heroes’, that lapses into impassioned German halfway through (extracted from the German edition of the ‘Heroes’ album). As the faintly ludicrous climax of Bowie’s infatuation with the Deutsche scene, it completes an essential and compelling album. You can download that track here. By the mid-’70s, he developed an effete, sophisticated version of Philly soul that he dubbed “plastic soul,” which eventually morphed into the eerie avant-pop of 1976′s Station to Station, which took the plastic soul of Young Americans into darker, avant-garde-tinged directions, yet was also a huge hit, generating the top ten single ‘Golden Years.’ The album inaugurated Bowie’s persona of the elegant ‘Thin White Duke,’ and it reflected Bowie’s growing cocaine-fueled paranoia. Soon, he decided his Los Angeles lifestyle was too boring and returned to England; shortly after arriving back in London, he gave the awaiting crowd a Nazi salute, a signal of his growing, drug-addled detachment from reality. The incident caused enormous controversy, and Bowie left the country to settle in Berlin, where he lived and worked with Brian Eno. Once in Berlin, Bowie sobered up and began painting, as well as studying art. He also developed a fascination with German electronic music, which Eno helped him fulfill with the work which went on to make up the majority of this soundtrack album.

After the initial success of the book and the film, Christiane found herself becoming an unlikely celebrity, both in Germany and other countries in Western Europe. A subculture of teenage girls in Germany began to emulate her style of dress as well as making visits to the Bahnhof Zoo station, which became an unlikely tourist attraction. This surprised authorities on youth drug abuse, who feared that despite the film’s bleakness and the many sordid scenes (particularly those portraying the horrific realities of cold turkey), vulnerable youths may have regarded Christiane as a cult heroine and role model. Wolf Heckmann, West Berlin’s drug commissioner of the time: “The book and film have increased interest in drugs in this city. Kids who come to visit used to ask to see the Berlin Wall. Now they want to see the Zoo Station.” The book sold so well (it was translated into most major West European languages) that Christiane remains able to support herself from the royalties. Christiane still receives fan-mail and is occasionally contacted by the German media, wanting to know how she is doing after all these years.

Download: David Bowie – Heroes / Helden

David Bowie – Review Timeline

Original Soundtrack on Discogs

Time Magazine Article from 1981

Christiane F Fan Website