Kate Winslet embodies the fearless Lee Miller in Lee, a film that traces the complex life of this photojournalism pioneer. A former model turned witness to the horrors of World War II, Miller broke conventions to document historic moments, particularly in the Nazi concentration camps. Ellen Kuras’ feature film explores Miller’s determination to reveal the unspeakable, even at the cost of her own well-being.
A pioneer who preferred “taking shots rather than being one”: in the film Lee, Kate Winslet brings to life the American Lee Miller, who broke through conventions to establish herself as a leading photojournalist of the 20th century and a key witness to Nazi atrocities.
Releasing this Wednesday in France, the film delves into a pivotal period in the life of this powerful woman (1907–1977), a former model who photographed concentration camps. Her iconic photo, showing her nude in Hitler’s bathtub in Berlin, became legendary.
“Lee lived many lives, and our biggest challenge was deciding which decisive period of her journey to highlight,” Winslet explains in the press kit, determined to “avoid the biopic trap” for such a complex figure.
The first feature film by experienced cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Lee begins in the carefree, bourgeois-bohemian atmosphere of the French Riviera in 1938. Around Miller, a former companion of Man Ray who became a fashion photographer, free love reigns, alcohol flows and few seem to notice Europe teetering on the edge of war. Among her circle are poet Paul Éluard, his wife Nusch (Noémie Merlant) and fashion editor Solange d’Ayen (Marion Cotillard).
Miller then meets art collector Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), moves with him to London and fights to travel to France in 1944 to document—with her Rolleiflex camera in tow—the horrors of war. As a woman, the obstacles are numerous, and Miller, working for the British edition of Vogue, faces many restrictions. “She was furious that women were not officially allowed in combat zones,” recalled her only son, Antony Penrose, in May.
Alongside her colleague and friend from Life magazine, David Scherman (played by comedian Andy Samberg in a rare serious role), Miller narrowly escapes death, photographs war mutilations, the first purges in France and eventually reaches the Eastern Front in defeated Germany. There, she captures images of Nazi families who committed suicide and, most importantly, enters the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald, where she finds convoys full of corpses and emaciated survivors.
“Instead of taking photos from a distance, Lee didn’t hesitate to climb aboard the train full of corpses,” Kate Winslet points out.
Ellen Kuras’ camera does not stop at the camp gates. The film shows prisoners in striped uniforms and reconstructs the interiors of Nazi camps, a bold and risky choice, contrasting with the more indirect approach of the recent Zone of Interest, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023.
Upon her return to London, a deeply scarred Miller seeks to reveal these atrocities to the world but is met with rejection by the British edition of Vogue. It’s the American edition of the magazine that ultimately publishes her photographic report under the title “Believe it.”
“People didn’t want to believe it. It’s astonishing how large parts of the Holocaust were concealed for so long. There was a real effort to cover up the facts, but Lee categorically refused to go along with it. It completely destroyed her,” says Kate Winslet.
To portray this free-spirited, tortured and determined woman, the 48-year-old British actress leaves nothing hidden: she bares herself without concealing her curves and embraces her dark circles and wrinkles to depict Lee Miller’s physical and psychological exhaustion. The Titanic, The Reader and Revolutionary Road star even goes so far as to transform herself into the aging, alcohol- and medication-dependent Miller, who reluctantly recounts her life to an inquisitive journalist.
“She was driven by compassion, and I think it consumed her,” says her son. “There was nothing left to keep her moving forward, and she couldn’t get rid of the images of what she had seen.”
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