Behind the story of Nadiuska -Roswicha Bertasha Smid Honczar- there are many questions: how could it be that a woman who had him ended up alone and with nothing? This is the first question that journalist Valeria Vegas tries to answer in the documentary El enigma Nadiuska, produced by Atresmedia Televisión in collaboration with Lavinia Audiovisual. Do you find the answer?
“I think so,” he tells us. “Nadiuska’s life is such an immense puzzle that it took 50 interviewees to find out what happened to her.” Nadiuska’s is a story of rise and fall to hell full of enigmas to solve. The story of how the character devoured the person until he turned into a broken toy. She was a victim of all kinds of abuse and mental health problems, she was a victim of an industry that squeezed her to the limit and then turned a deaf ear to her calls for help.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia after going through a real ordeal, this documentary remembers not only who Nadiuska was, a true icon of the 70s who went on to film 30 films in 10 years, but also what the truth was about this woman and whether she is still alive today. live. “She was already aware in 1995 that she had not told the truth about herself and even then she was telling us that she was keeping something. And, obviously, she was keeping it,” says Vegas.
Nadiuska was everything: the most photographed woman in the Spanish press in 1975, the first woman to show her breasts in a magazine, the first cover of Interviú, the woman who was capable of releasing three films in the same month… She had everything, but “they vilely took advantage of her,” says Ana Valdi, a television director, and one of the people who witnessed very closely how the toy broke, in the documentary. Who took advantage of her? “Powerful men.”
Nadiuska’s life is such an immense puzzle that it took 50 interviewees to find out what happened to her
The myth of Nadiuska was born in the 70s by the then best representative, Damián Rabal, Paco Rabal’s brother, and the man who led the great stars of the time. A “very powerful” man, say those who knew him. “As good he was the best, as bad he was the worst.” It was the beginning of Nadiuska’s success, but also the beginning of the end.
As revealed in the documentary, which can now be seen on Atresplayer, Damián Rabal absolutely controlled Nadiuska’s life. To such an extent that when the envy of other actresses of the time regarding Nadiuska’s success led them to denounce her to the National Entertainment Union for being a foreigner – at that time no foreigner could work in Spain – it was he who arranged a wedding with a stranger so that Nadiuska could get the papers and could continue working. Rabal paid 3,000 pesetas, according to testimonies, to the man who married Nadiuska. They were the best years in Nadiuska’s life: money, a penthouse on the Paseo del Prado, dozens of magazine covers, viewers adored her, all the directors wanted her in her films because Nadiuska assured them a box office success. Until the freest actress in the film industry of that Spain falls in love with a handsome reporter, Alfonso Ayllón.
Nobody knew then what that affair was going to mean for the actress. Damián Rabal was madly in love with her. He had his wife, but everyone was aware of what Rabal felt for the actress. Nadiuska says enough and leaves with Ayllón. Rabal then swears that she would make his life impossible “and boy did she do it.” The man with the most power in those years of pop cinema destroyed it, invented it, lied and closed all the doors that he had opened for it.
“The men destroyed it,” they denounce in the documentary, “Damián the most because after him everyone would do it.” What happened for Nadiuska to suddenly disappear from public life and cinema in the 80s? The shadow of a black hand hovers over her fall from grace, a bottomless descent that leads The Nadiuska Enigma to solve whether she is still alive 50 years after touching the sky. Yes, Nadiuska is alive, but for 20 years she has been admitted to a religious psychiatric hospital where the world of success and tragedy that she knew is no longer part of her.
“The truth about Nadiuska, among many others, is that she was too closely linked to power and I’m not just referring to that of the State,” explains Vegas. “Too linked, without her wanting it, to that world of powerful men, from Damián Rabal, to the Marquis of Cubas, to the urban legend that she was with the King,” she continues. “Sometimes the black hand is the weight of history,” says the journalist.
Nadiuska “was afraid,” say several of the testimonies in the documentary, and Nadiuska disappeared. “She was not crazy, she was driven crazy,” says Valdi in The Enigma of Nadiuska. For 15 years, the actress did not release any film and the fact that she was no longer the center of attention led her to deny her past. Nadiuska no longer loved Nadiuska, she wanted to be Nadia, but she couldn’t be because “Nadiuska could no longer be anyone other than Nadiuska,” says Bermúdez de Castro in the documentary, one of the men who knew the actress best and who Although he has been offered to participate in other documentaries, he only agreed to give his testimony for this one because of how important Nadiuska was to him.
At that time Nadiuska, a German Jew, converted to Christianity and moved away from the spotlight trying to become a businesswoman. Again, the men lead her to ruin. She tries it by setting up a production company with Manuel Mateo and Carlos Garnel. She was left with nothing, she lost everything and “from then on she started to go crazy.” They were the worst years of a woman to whom few people cared anymore. “The reports of Nadiuska dressed did not sell, those of Nadiuska naked did,” says Toni Aliaga, her last representative, in the documentary.
A suicide attempt, a fall into hell, hopeless, forgotten… Nadiuska ends up living in the parking lot of a service area in the town of Alcolea in La Mancha. She ate the little they gave her at the Mavi hostel, she drank glasses of hot water to warm up and “she was very afraid.” Why did the alarm never go off? Yes, she did jump, but no one heard her. “No one ever took Nadiuska seriously,” they say in the documentary.
If I had been able to interview her, I would have asked her if she has reconciled with Nadiuska.
Until Pablo Romero appears in her life, a doctor from a mobile unit who by chance stops in the Alcolea service area and recognizes her. He approaches to talk to her and immediately realizes that the actress suffers from schizophrenia. She is admitted to the Guadalajara hospital and there she meets Salvador Herráez, the man who brought her the peace she needed. Thanks to the Aisge foundation, the entity that manages the intellectual property rights of actors, voice actors, dancers and stage directors in Spain, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She has never left there again, she has never given an interview again, she has never returned to her past.
“If I had been able to interview her, although I was always clear not to do so because it would expose her too much, I would ask her if she is aware of everything she meant for this country, despite the fact that for a long time they made her feel that she was nothing. And I would ask her if she has reconciled with Nadiuska,” Valeria Vegas reveals. Because Nadiuska’s enigma is not only about discovering the countless unknowns of an icon, it is also about giving back what was taken away from her so many times: her recognition.
“For that path you opened, for inspiring so many of us… Thank you Nadiuska.”