Kate Winslet is magnificent in this gripping film about the trailblazing woman photojournalist Lee Miller.
Winslet, the producer and driving force behind the film, spent eight years on the project, determined to honour the life of the woman who shocked the world with her harrowing photos of Hitler’s death camps.
The film focuses on Miller’s intense time as a frontline photographer but this was only one aspect of her extraordinary career.
Born in 1907, she emerged in her 20s as one of New York’s most sought-after fashion models. She studied theatre production, acting, painting and photography, then went to Paris in the 30s to work with the surrealist artist Man Ray.
When war broke out she went to London and covered the Blitz for Vogue magazine. After D-Day she pressed to go to the front lines in Europe but British law banned women from active combat roles.
Undeterred, Miller attached herself to the US Army. She portrayed the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation, the shame of accused collaborators with shaven heads, the devastation in the streets of Berlin – always searching for the human stories from a female perspective.
She teamed up with Life magazine photographer David Scherman (a rare dramatic role for comedian Andy Samberg) to drive deep into Germany to expose the horrors of the Holocaust. They were the first journalists to witness the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald.
Miller was determined her photographs would prove to the doubting world that the Nazi atrocities were genuine – but British Vogue refused to print them, deciding they were too confronting.
One of the film’s most powerful scenes shows a distraught Miller snatching up handfuls of her negatives and frantically slicing into them with scissors.
“Who cares?” she confronts Vogue editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough). “No one has seen them and you won’t print them.”
(American Vogue published her Holocaust photos under the heading: Believe it.)
Winslet became so emotionally involved with Miller’s courageous and tenacious character that she classes this as her most dramatic role ever.
The film is a triumph for the director, award-winning cinematographer Ellen Kuras, making her feature directing debut.
The script, by Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume, is based on a memoir by Miller’s son Antony Penrose, a photographer and author who has spent a good part of his adult life preserving his mother’s legacy.
Watch the trailer…
