Never shy of a challenge, the Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet learned her way around a Rolleiflex camera for her latest role as Lee Miller in the biopic ‘Lee’.
The film focuses on the extraordinary life of the former model turned photojournalist during World War II, who was the of the only female journalists, and one of the first correspondents to photograph the liberation of Dachau concentration camp in 1945.
One of her most famous photographs shows her taking a bath in Hitler’s bathtub after entering ‘the Eagles nest’ with a group of GI’s in Munich, although it was Life photographer David Sherman who hit the shutter.
Winslet entirely embodies Miller in the film, so much so that Antony Penrose, Miller’s son, was convinced she was actually his late mother when watching it.
He told 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega: "I had this total… cognitive dissonance because I thought she was real. It was so like her. And I thought, 'How'd they do that? She's been dead for years. It's a movie.'"
One of the ways Winslet created the realistic performance was by using a working Rolleiflex, the twin-lens camera with which almost all of Miller’s wartime photographs were captured.
"It couldn't just be a prop… I had to be confident and comfortable with it. And in order to do that, I had to know what I was doing," Winslet told Vega in an interview. She added that she learned to use her body as a tripod, holding her breath before taking a photo to keep the camera steady and avoid ruining the shot.
"Anyone who's worked with a Rolleiflex camera might watch that film. And they would know if I'm [breathing] that's not a photograph that is ever going to work," Winslet added. "It was my job to be as authentically like Lee as I could. So, there's just no way I wouldn't consider doing those things."
Rolleiflex is a well-loved historic brand originally made by the German company Franke & Heidecke, and later Rollei-Werke. The name ‘Rolleiflex’ is commonly used to refer to Rollei’s premier line of medium format twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras.
They were known for their exceptional compact size, durability and exceptional build quality, and according to Miller’s son, she was so in tune with her camera that “she could take the thing down to the last nut and bolt and put it back together again through the night in some crummy billet. And she had the fearlessness to do it.”
Speaking to Sotheby’s, Penrose, who is also the founder of the Lee Miller Archive, said: “When she was using a camera, it was like an extension of her. Kate Winslet picks this up beautifully in “Lee” because the camera becomes a personality in itself, a witness to history.
“Kate found one of the last Rolleiflex technicians in the world, an amazing guy named Claude Samaran, to create an exact replica of this camera, down to the last detail. She took the trouble to really learn how to use that camera and spent a lot of time at the archive sitting alone with the stuff, just contemplating it.”
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