“Lee Miller took nine years of my life”

Ano film had yet been dedicated to Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, born April 23, 1907 in Poughkeepsie (New York State). Assistant and mistress of Man Ray, actress for Cocteau, close to the surrealists, she abandoned her comfortable life as a model to join the American troops in France and Europe as a correspondent for the magazine Vogue British and leave behind a true silver treasure.

Lee Millera biopic by Ellen Kuras, is the first to shine the spotlight on the extraordinary journey of a woman who decided to take her life and her destiny into her own hands. Producer of the film which was not easy to finance, British actress Kate Winslet, 48, was fully involved in the project, while playing the war photographer alongside Marion Cotillard, Alexander Skarsgård, Andy Samberg, Josh O’Connor and Noémie Merlant.

Rolleiflex in hand, she testifies on the bombings of the Saint-Malo pocket, the Liberation of Paris, the Dachau camp and Hitler’s eagle’s nest in Berchtesgaden.

To embody this non-conformist character driven by a taste for risk and a sense of commitment, the Oscar-winning actress The Reader (2009) plays the card of brutal realism. Spontaneous, unvarnished, she carries the film on her shoulders and takes us into the whirlwind of an extraordinary life. Meet an actress who speaks the truth.

The Point:What does Lee Miller, who you resemble physically, mean to you? Why did his story need to be told today?

Kate Winslet : When I first learned about this woman’s story, I was totally overwhelmed and realized that actually few people really knew what she did during World War II. That’s when Lee became Lee. And, in fact, if you google Lee Miller, you discover Man Ray’s former muse, the ex-model, a job she hated. She wanted to be a photographer. It was his passion.

So I knew who Lee Miller was and I knew her images, but I didn’t really know what she had to do to end up on the front lines and the obstacles she faced. I certainly didn’t know how brave she had to be to witness and be that visual voice for victims of conflict to reveal the truth and give those victims the right to tell their stories. Without this story, we would never know theirs. This is why this film is important today.

How do you explain his determination to abandon everything to become a war photographer reporter for the Vogue British.

By the desire to take another path. Lee Miller suffered a terrible thing when she was a child [elle a été violée à l’âge de 7 ans, NDLR]. She lived with this terrible trauma and never told anyone about it. Somehow, she refused to let that define her. And, despite everything, she continued to love life. She wasn’t angry. She had nothing vengeful in her. She also liked men. She was very free with her body.

I find this absolutely remarkable because in reality she would have had every reason to be deeply troubled throughout her life. And sure, she went through some tough times, but she still threw herself into life and lived it her way.

So I think the injustice she suffered as a child was what motivated her throughout her adult life. She had suffered such injustice herself. It was not possible for her to stand back and do nothing. She felt a duty to tell the stories of the victims, especially women and children, during the conflict.

You produced the film, which you say wasn’t easy. A real obstacle course, like that of Lee Miller when she wanted to go to the front…

People asked me why I was so interested in her. It seemed incredible to me that some men considered her unattractive just because she didn’t meet certain beauty standards and struggled with alcoholism. During World War II, she did not want the truth to be hidden and the stories of civilians and victims not to be told. Her photography was unique because she used her Rolleiflex camera at heart height.

How did you work with his son, Antony Penrose, to make the film?

The first thing I did was get his blessing and hope he would join me. My relationship with Antony became very important during the whole process of the film. He shared with me absolutely everything he knew about his mother. So many things you can’t find in books. I had full access to his archives, which was incredibly valuable.

I was able to actually touch his camera and smell his clothes. I read all the very personal letters exchanged with Audrey Withers, the editor-in-chief of Vogueand with Roland, her husband. When he discovered boxes of 60,000 negatives of his photographs during the war in the attic of his house in Chiddingly, Sussex, Antony realized how brave his mother had been. Since then, he has dedicated his life to preserving her memory so that her legacy lives on.

What do these very realistic photographs tell us today about the war in Ukraine and the Middle East? What does Lee Miller’s journey mean in the world we live in?

She was one of the very first reportage photographers, as we now know. What she felt as an obligation was to testify, to tell the hidden truths, the secrets of the Nazi regime. This is crucial because, without it, without the war correspondents, the photojournalists, without these people, the lives of the victims and their stories would be completely forgotten. That’s why I think it’s essential to tell the story right now.

How did you get into the skin of the character?

The character grew on me over the years of developing the film. It took seven years, seven years of learning. It was necessary, if possible, to collect everything about her, to listen to recordings of her voice. I spent months learning how to use his camera. I didn’t want it to seem like an accessory. It must have been like an extension of my arms, like I wasn’t thinking. This was important because, although the camera is an essential part of the film, it also had to disappear.

We only had nine weeks to shoot, given the budget we had. Then we had to delay the release of the film because it seemed unfair to me to release it at the time of the writers’ and actors’ strike in Hollywood. Now that it’s finally coming out, it’s nine years of my life, but I managed to do it…

How did your meetings with people who played an important role in Lee Miller’s life inform your film?

There is a scene where Lee enters the offices of Vogue to search for his photos of Dachau, very angry. I know this happened because I met a woman who was, at 15, a temp secretary at Vogue. She told me that one day Lee arrived, drunk, furious at not seeing her images published in the issue of Vogue. She started attacking the negatives with scissors like crazy.

Then the young secretary put on a big girl’s voice and said to him: “Look in the mirror. These are my scissors and you are going to give them back to me. » Lee stopped, turned to her, put down the scissors and walked out of the room.

The price of Lee Miller’s commitment was very heavy as she seemed devastated in the aftermath of the war. What do you think?

Yes, she was traumatized, but before the end of her life, she recovered from her drinking problems. In fact, she reinvented herself as a Cordon Bleu and led a very happy life in England, at Farley Farm House, where the museum and its archives are now located. She also had a granddaughter, Amy, whom she held in her arms for a few months before she died. In fact, she was in the right place when she died.

« Lee Miller »biopic by Ellen Kuras (United States, 1h52), with Kate Winslet, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgard… In theaters Wednesday October 9.