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The Director about the Film
Georg Misch – “Sometimes it was as if she were still controlling things even from the afterlife.”
Nobody knows the whole story of Hedy Lamarr. There isn't much material that can be trusted. To tell a story that is based on fact wouldn't do Hedy Lamarr justice. I could have done a portrait of Hedwig Kiesler in that way, but not of Hedy Lamarr, the most beautiful woman in the world. Who was this woman? Sometimes I couldn't tell what was true and what was make-believe anymore. There are so many stories that have been told. That is why Calling Hedy Lamarr didn't end up a biographical film in the usual sense. Every claim and alleged truth would have merely continued the mystification process. I wanted to trace the inner conflict of this torn character but also to reveal the illusionary game she even played with the people closest to her. It wasn't just in a technological sense that she was a gifted inventor; she was constantly reinventing her whole life.
“She got herself entangled in a web of truth and myth.”
It was exactly this blend of truth and myth, this life in a web of half truths and lies she'd spun herself that interested me most. A web in which she often no doubt also felt trapped.
“The tragedy of a two-faced woman”
From the beginning I had the impression that to her the most important thing was to be understood. She wanted to be recognized. She wanted people to forget for a moment the Hollywood star and see her as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler from Vienna. Somehow her beauty got in the way. Her 'look' was copied by many fellow actresses and even decades later used as a model for the replicant Rachel in Blade Runner. In a certain sense she was one of the first super models, more so than an actress. Her beauty was like a shield she used to protect herself but which caused her a lot of damage as well.
“Instead of frequency hopping a star in the Hollywood firmament”
She knew beauty and intelligence, but as two irreconcilable parts of her being. Like the flip sides of a coin. One or the other. The most beautiful woman in the world, after all, can't work in an office for technological developments. Her role was to be a star. A two-fold tragic fate because her fame as a star only lasted briefly and the rest of her life she spent completely forgotten and much of the time scraping by at the poverty level, just barely making ends meet. Not until just before her death did she receive a share of recognition for the great impact her invention has made.
I'm sure she would have been a beautiful woman until she died, but she wasn't able to leave that up to Nature and had plastic surgery done countless times to keep from aging. That was bound to go wrong. In the end she was disfigured and reclusive. That's one of the truths, she was disillusioned with life, felt lonely and believed society owed her something.
“The dream of a different life”
Like in my film I’m From Nowhere I also stumbled completely unexpectedly in Calling Hedy Lamarr on this dream of a different life. This notion, this obsession people have that the grass is always greener on the other side. Perhaps it's one of mankind's most basic drives, in any case this yearning often leads to emotional loss of orientation or miscalculation.
Hedy Lamarr often yearned to lead a normal life, be recognized as an inventor, not be a star. Her children still live this myth of being famous as a kind of mirror image. They have normal lives and professions and dream of being famous, of “coming out” into the limelight, of recognition for their artistic talents. These aspirations take on an even more tragic note when one considers the sad effects this fame had on their mother and indirectly on their family life. A life far removed from reality, fueled by longing, the hope of rescue, and the intense, all-consuming desire to be recognized. That's what I focused on in my film, this desire to be recognized. In my film I gave Hedy Lamarr the understanding and respect she yearned for. |
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