Kate Winslet gives a powerful performance as the former model turned war photographer in Ellen Kuras’ film. A classic tale, but one that has the merit of introducing us to this daring and stubborn woman.
Kate Winslet plays the lead role in Ellen Kuras’ film “Lee Miller” (out October 9), a former model who became one of the first female war photographers. But the “Titanic” star’s role goes far beyond that: as co-producer of the feature film, she was at the origin of this project, which was close to her heart. In addition to the financing, she was responsible for the casting, the director (a renowned cinematographer, whose first feature film), the prestigious supporting cast, a talented technical team (photography, sets, costumes…), and even the composer Alexandre Desplat .
American Lee Miller was a model, an artist’s model, Man Ray’s muse… settled in France, she frequented artists and intellectuals, writers, painters, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, Picasso, Cocteau… A sequence in the film recalls the happy, carefree pre -war summers on the Côte d’Azur, where she met her future husband, art dealer Roland Penrose (played by Alexander Skarsgard), whom she followed to London.
From then on, she preferred taking photos to posing, and when World War II broke out, Lee Miller was a photographer for Vogue, the magazine for which she had once posed. Like all women who have been mobilized, she contributes to the war effort with her reports, chronicling the Blitz in London. Much to her sorrow, no women were sent to the front, and it wasn’t until the summer of 1944 that she landed in Normandy with the American army, war correspondent for British Vogue, with her Rolleiflex camera and portable typewriter.
An exhibition in Saint-Malo
At first, she was only allowed to photograph field hospitals, then in August she was sent to Saint-Malo, a city that “should be pacified” but wasn’t yet. A sequence in the film recounts the bloody liberation of the Breton town, where Lee Miller was the only photojournalist present. In five days in the ruined, napalm-bombed city, she is said to have taken 300 historic shots, some 50 of which are on show in an exhibition in Saint-Malo (until November 3).
Then came the Liberation of Paris, where she met up with her friends from the good old days, Solange d’Ayen (played by Marion Cotillard), Nush Eluard (Noémie Merlant, currently in “Emmanuelle”)… and realized that the past few years had been terrible, discovering the reality of the Occupation, prison, deportation, executions… With Life magazine photographer David Scherman (played by Andy Samberg), Lee Miller follows the progress of the American army in Germany, going “to the heart of hell ” and capturing in her lens all the horrors of the Second World War: the fighting, the shorn women, the families of Nazi dignitaries who committed suicide in Leipzig, and the unspeakable death camps in Buchenwald and Dachau, the mass graves, the piled- up corpses…
Historical documents
His photos of the camps were not published at first, too unbearable at a time when victory was being celebrated in London. It would be some time before they were recognized as the historical documents they are. The film reconstructs the taking of these famous shots, including this one of Lee Miller taking a bath in Hitler’s bathtub, in his Munich apartments.
Opening the Deauville American Film Festival, Ellen Kuras’ film is classically staged, with a superficial process of successive flashbacks, as her son Antony questions Lee Miller about a past he knows almost nothing about. But Kate Winslet puts all her energy into the incarnation of this daring and stubborn woman, energetic and free, and the great merit of this feature film is that it brings this exceptional story to light.
Patrick TARDIT
“Lee Miller”, a film by Ellen Kuras, starring Kate Winslet (out October 9).
Lee Miller, Saint-Malo under siege, August 1944” exhibition, Chapelle de la Victoire, Saint-Malo, until November 3.