Images of war, suffering and liberation - captured by a woman who fought against resistance to earn her place in journalism. With "Die Fotografin" (The Photographer), the "ARD SommerKino" (ARD Summer Cinema) presents on Monday, August 3, at 8:15 PM on Erste an impressive biopic about the life of legendary war photographer Elizabeth "Lee" Miller (1907-1977). In the leading role, Oscar winner Kate Winslet (50) convinces with a performance that is both powerful and nuanced.
Director Ellen Kuras tells not only the story of an extraordinary photographer, but also that of a woman who asserted herself in a male-dominated world. The plot begins in 1937/38 in the South of France. The film follows the formerly celebrated model Lee Miller from her beginnings there as a photographer to her assignments as a war correspondent during World War II.
Together with Life photographer David E. Scherman (1916-1997), she documented the liberation of Europe and captured the atrocities in the concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald in images that still count among the most important photographic testimonies of the Holocaust today.
Convincing Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet carries the film, which came to cinemas in 2024, almost single-handedly. She shows Lee Miller as a self-confident, uncompromising and at the same time vulnerable woman who exposes herself to the horrors of war because she is convinced that the world must see the truth. She is supported by a high-caliber ensemble including Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Andy Samberg and Josh O'Connor. O'Connor plays Antony Penrose (78), Miller's son, whose interview forms the framing narrative and whose biography is the screenplay's source.
The fact that the film could be realized at all is also thanks to Winslet. She not only committed as the lead actress, but crucially advanced the project as a producer over the years. Her concern: to place center stage a woman whose achievements had long remained hidden behind her famous name.
The Real Lee Miller
The American Elizabeth "Lee" Miller is today considered one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. She first became known as a model in New York before she went to Paris and learned photography from the surrealist Man Ray (1890-1976). Soon she developed her own style and worked successfully as a fashion photographer.
With the beginning of World War II, her life changed fundamentally. For the British "Vogue", she reported on the consequences of German air raids on London and later accompanied the Allied troops through Europe as an accredited war correspondent. Her photographs from the liberated concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald are among the most haunting documents of the crimes committed during the time of National Socialism. The iconic image that coincidentally shows Lee Miller in the bathtub in Hitler's Munich apartment on the day of his death also became famous - taken by her colleague David E. Scherman. After the war, Miller suffered from severe psychological consequences of her experiences. Only many years after her death was her photographic work comprehensively honored and recognized as a milestone of photographic and contemporary history.
"Die Fotografin" (The Photographer) is thus much more than a classic biopic. The film commemorates a woman who understood her camera as a tool against forgetting - and whose images still shock today because they did not heroicize war, but captured its human abysses in an unvarnished way.
