CALLING HEDY LAMARR
(D, A, GB 2004) 75 mins / colour / Digi-Beta / 16:9
Dir.: Georg Misch
Producers: Gunter Hanfgarn, Ralph Wieser and Martin Rosenbaum
Funds: Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmfonds Vienna, Austrian Film Institute
Coproducers TV: WDR/Arte, BBC, Avro
FESTVALS:
+ International Film Festival Locarno, Premiere ("Special Mention of the Jury") 2004
+ The Hamptons Film Festival ("International Golden Starfish Competition")
+ Viennale, Wien 2004
+ AFI ("Made in Germany") in Los Angeles/USA 2004
+ Filmfest Kassel 2004
+ International Film Festiva del Cine, Sevilla 2004
+ International Film Festival Bratislava, Slowakia
+ Sarasota Film Festival, USA
+ Max Ophüls Filmfestival Saarbrücken 2005
+ International Film Festival Göteborg, Sweden 2005
+ Diagonale - Festival des österreich. Films, Graz/Austria
+ International Film Festival Adelaide, Australien
+ INPUT 2005 San Francisco/USA
+ EU-Festival Cairo 2006
SYNOPSIS:
Legendary Hollywood-diva Hedy Lamarr shocked European society with her 10-minute nude swimming scene in Ecstasy (1933). Feeling cramped by her first husband, Austrian arms manufacturer Fritz Mandl, she went to Hollywood gaining an incredible fame as the "most beautiful woman in the world", though her career was unlucky due to fatal mistakes: she refused the leading role in "Casablanca"...
After her death in 2000 revealed one of the most fascinating chapters in Lamarr's life. Hedy Lamarr shares the title to a 1942 patent for a “secret communication system” intended for use as a radio guidance device for US Navy torpedoes. Lamarr came up with the idea of “frequency hopping” to quickly shift the radio signals of control devices, making them invulnerable to radio interference or jamming. While this technology is the basis for modern mobile communication, her invention was kept as a military secret. Hedy never made a penny with her invention and spent her last years in the anonymous suburbia of Florida, when her phone was the only connection with the outside world.
The story is told through the perspective of her son Anthony, ironically a telephon-dealer and filmproducer, who tries to produce a feature film about his mother. In his research he detects contradictory theories and phantastic stories. Phones are the leitmotiv of the film, which jumps through times and places. Lamarr´s story is told like a magic, nostalgic conference between the different protagonists in which Hedy is present through feature film clips. The film ends, where Hedy Lamarr´s story originally began, in Vienna. In her last will Hedy decreed that her ashes should be scattered in the famous forests of Vienna – the Wiener Wald. She had always dreamt of coming home to Vienna, but never made it in her lifetime.