Year: 2017
Director: Alexandra Dean
Country: US
Language: English
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) was an Austrian actress whose best known film, a Czechoslovakian picture called Ecstasy (1933), made her a notorious film star. German Fuhror Adolf Hitler was known to have hated it and thus outed her as being Jewish. Luckily, or perhaps to her detriment, Louis B. Mayer of MGM brought her to America and touted her as the "world's most beautiful woman".
Bombshell depicts the life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.
Inventor you say? Yes, like many documentaries coming out in the 2010's it is revealed that America has had a history of down-playing women's technical achievements in favor of highlighting their more superficial endeavors, which in Lamarr's case was always being "beautiful". This supposed "strength" of hers came back to haunt Lamarr in her later years as her looks could not keep up with the public's standards and gossip magazines would comment about how she "used to look good".
Much of Bombshell is standard documentary procedure; talking head interviews are interspersed with clips from Lamarr's films and illustrated with photos from her life. Bombshell does a good job at using newly discovered recordings of Lamarr retelling her story to frame its overall narrative. This, infact, is the first time Lamarr's story is told directly from her as her autobiography was largely ghost-written.
Some of Alexandra Dean's chronology is sloppy; one minute Lamarr is an outcast and the next she is able to raise millions of dollars. Its revealed later in the film that she has had seven marriages, but only a couple are discussed in great depth. I wish this film was longer to give more clarity, but I suppose the overall feminist message "women's contributions are often overlooked" is more important than including every minor detail. Overall a great work about a great woman.
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