The pretty faces that give Hollywood its glamour eventually fade, but Alexandra Hall’s documentary reveals a remarkable woman who parlayed her beauty into an incredible life — from nude scenes in a notorious 1933 Austrian film, to eleven years in Hollywood as MGM’s ‘most beautiful girl in the world’, to a seemingly incompatible achievement: she invented a revolutionary communications technology for the WW2 war effort, and only belatedly received credit for it. A remarkable audio interview with the legendary lady brings a fabulous life into focus.
Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber / Zeitgeist
2017 / Color & B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date April 24, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 22.99
Starring: Hedy Lamarr, Jeanine Basinger, Peter Bogdanovich, Mel Brooks, Gillian Jacobs, Wendy Colton, Jan-Christopher Horak, Diane Kruger, Guy Livingston, Anthony Loder, Jimmy Loder, Lodi Loder, Denise Loder-DeLuca, Art McTighe, Fleming Meeks, Robert Osborne.
Cinematography: Buddy Squires, Alex Stikich
Film Editor: Alexandra Dean,...
Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber / Zeitgeist
2017 / Color & B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date April 24, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 22.99
Starring: Hedy Lamarr, Jeanine Basinger, Peter Bogdanovich, Mel Brooks, Gillian Jacobs, Wendy Colton, Jan-Christopher Horak, Diane Kruger, Guy Livingston, Anthony Loder, Jimmy Loder, Lodi Loder, Denise Loder-DeLuca, Art McTighe, Fleming Meeks, Robert Osborne.
Cinematography: Buddy Squires, Alex Stikich
Film Editor: Alexandra Dean,...
- 4/17/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Prior to watching Bombshell, I had never heard of Hedy Lamarr. This is shameful for a film critic and feminist to confess, considering the sumptuous life-story that the actor/inventor always wanted to tell. But first-time documentary filmmaker Alexandra Dean has set me right, sympathetically revealing the brains behind the beauty.
Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler) was a Hollywood actor from Austria, who worked mainly for Louis B. Mayer at MGM between the ‘30s and ‘50s. She was known for her good looks and as a potent sex symbol, whose fame began in 1933 after the release of the notorious Austrian film Ecstasy. The movie was made famous (or infamous) by its nudity, and its being one of the first cinematic portrayals of a female orgasm. But, as Dean is sure to drum into our unenlightened minds, Lamarr was so much more than a pretty airhead.
Related: Mary Magdalene Review
From an early age,...
Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Kiesler) was a Hollywood actor from Austria, who worked mainly for Louis B. Mayer at MGM between the ‘30s and ‘50s. She was known for her good looks and as a potent sex symbol, whose fame began in 1933 after the release of the notorious Austrian film Ecstasy. The movie was made famous (or infamous) by its nudity, and its being one of the first cinematic portrayals of a female orgasm. But, as Dean is sure to drum into our unenlightened minds, Lamarr was so much more than a pretty airhead.
Related: Mary Magdalene Review
From an early age,...
- 3/8/2018
- by Euan Franklin
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Diane Kruger reads from Lamarr's letters in Alexandra Dean's revelatory documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
In the final installment of my conversation with Alexandra Dean, the director of the revelatory documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, we explore the background of the woman who inspired the looks of Catwoman, as well as Disney's Snow White, Mel Brooks and his Hedley Lamarr character (portrayed by Harvey Korman) in Blazing Saddles, the impact Hedy Lamarr had from the start with a role in Gustav Machatý's 1933 film Ecstasy (Ekstase), and the discovery of the interview tapes done by Fleming Meeks, that allow Hedy herself to guide us through her life.
With interviews (including Peter Bogdanovich, Jeanine Basinger, Robert Osborne, Michael Tilson Thomas, Mel Brooks, and Lamarr's family), expertly edited (by Dean, Penelope Falk and Lindy Jankur), Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is assembled with care. Her life plays out...
In the final installment of my conversation with Alexandra Dean, the director of the revelatory documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, we explore the background of the woman who inspired the looks of Catwoman, as well as Disney's Snow White, Mel Brooks and his Hedley Lamarr character (portrayed by Harvey Korman) in Blazing Saddles, the impact Hedy Lamarr had from the start with a role in Gustav Machatý's 1933 film Ecstasy (Ekstase), and the discovery of the interview tapes done by Fleming Meeks, that allow Hedy herself to guide us through her life.
With interviews (including Peter Bogdanovich, Jeanine Basinger, Robert Osborne, Michael Tilson Thomas, Mel Brooks, and Lamarr's family), expertly edited (by Dean, Penelope Falk and Lindy Jankur), Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is assembled with care. Her life plays out...
- 3/8/2018
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Chicago – Hedy Lamarr was tagged as “the world’s most beautiful woman” in movies during her brief run as matinee idol during the 1940s. While taking that on, she was also co-inventing a wireless guidance system during World War II. Director Alexandra Dean contrasts that double life in “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.”
The documentary film – an impressive look at a somewhat famous woman both in her time and ahead of it – explores how an extraordinarily beautiful immigrant from Vienna became an American movie star, and in her spare time co-invented a wireless “frequency hopping” system that was the root of Gps, wi-fi and other technological marvels of our age. Dismissed in her era, and finally recognized when she well past her prime, Hedy Lamarr is a fascinating both as a film star and as an innovator. The documentary opens Friday, January 19th, 2018, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago.
The documentary film – an impressive look at a somewhat famous woman both in her time and ahead of it – explores how an extraordinarily beautiful immigrant from Vienna became an American movie star, and in her spare time co-invented a wireless “frequency hopping” system that was the root of Gps, wi-fi and other technological marvels of our age. Dismissed in her era, and finally recognized when she well past her prime, Hedy Lamarr is a fascinating both as a film star and as an innovator. The documentary opens Friday, January 19th, 2018, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago.
- 1/17/2018
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story Zeitgeist Films Director: Alexandra Dean Screenwriter: Alexandra Dean Cast: Anthony Loder, Mel Brooks, Jennifer Hom, Wendy Colton, Fleming Meeks, Peter Bogdanovich, Diane Kruger, Michael Tilson Thomas Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 12/13/17 Opens: November 24, 2017 How would you feel if you invented something worth thirty billion dollars, that’s $30,000,000,000, […]
The post Bombshell Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Bombshell Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 12/14/2017
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
The tell-all “autobiography” Ecstasy and Me: My Life As A Woman was exactly what Hedy Lamarr’s agent wanted to make quick money. But it wasn’t her life. Whether her ghostwriter’s words were true or not, the story dealt with everything she hoped wouldn’t define her legacy. Sadly she never had the chance to set the record straight with a follow-up of her own creation despite ambitions for one. The former Hollywood starlet became a recluse, barely seen in public and hardly in a position to be listened to or believed. And yet there were rumors — clear-cut facts actually — that Lamarr did much more than act, dance, and sell war bonds. The truth had her being the inventor of a patent with an estimated market value of $30 billion. Hedy Lamarr was a trendsetting genius and no one knew.
So of course director Alexandra Dean would want to...
So of course director Alexandra Dean would want to...
- 11/22/2017
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
MaryAnn’s quick take… The infuriatingly tragic true story of the Hollywood superstar whose brain was ignored because she was beautiful. A stupendous tribute to a remarkable woman. I’m “biast” (pro): I’m desperate for stories about women, especially true ones that have gone untold
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
If you were crafting a parable to explain how our culture values women for nothing but our looks and denies our intelligence, you might come up with something like what happened to Hedy Lamarr… though your parable could legitimately be criticized as too on-the-nose, too absurd to be taken even as metaphor. “What’s that? The most beautiful woman in the world is also a brilliant inventor, whose astonishingly creative idea would radically reshape civilization, but only decades after her work was denied, ignored, and belittled because she...
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
If you were crafting a parable to explain how our culture values women for nothing but our looks and denies our intelligence, you might come up with something like what happened to Hedy Lamarr… though your parable could legitimately be criticized as too on-the-nose, too absurd to be taken even as metaphor. “What’s that? The most beautiful woman in the world is also a brilliant inventor, whose astonishingly creative idea would radically reshape civilization, but only decades after her work was denied, ignored, and belittled because she...
- 11/22/2017
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
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