Lee Aims Unflinching Lens

This excerpt is from the full story that appears in the October 2024 issue of American Cinematographer magazine.

Unit photography by Kimberley French, SMPSP, courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

Re-creating the scale and drama of World War II on an independent production might strike some filmmakers as a tall order, but Lee called for an intensely personal perspective that narrowed the focus. “This is a film in which the actors and their emotions must come to the foreground, and the camerawork, optics and light must be modest and become a background,” says cinematographer Paweł Edelman, PSC of the biographical drama, which marks the feature directorial debut of ASC member Ellen Kuras. The film’s story portrays a seminal chapter in the life of Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) — a fashion model and photographer who became a war correspondent for Vogue during World War II and photographed many pivotal events in the European Theater — and is adapted from the book The Lives of Lee Miller, by Antony Penrose, Miller’s son.

“Lee had been objectified for many years as a model, so it was a significant decision for her to go from being in front of the camera to behind it and taking control of what she was seeing,” says Kuras. “I wanted to incorporate that into the look of the film. I wanted us to feel like we were next to Lee and experiencing everything with her, feeling her heartbeat and hearing her breathing as she’s going through all of this.”

Kuras’ directing credits include the Oscar-nominated documentary feature The Betrayal — Nerakhoon (AC April ’08) and such television projects as Ozark, Catch-22 and The Umbrella Academy. She had worked with Winslet as the cinematographer on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (AC April ’04) and A Little Chaos (AC April ’15), and the two were keen to collaborate again. Both sparked to Miller’s story.

When it was time to choose a cinematographer for the project, Kuras thought immediately of Edelman, whose work on Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (AC June ’03) garnered ASC and Academy Award nominations. “Paweł’s work with Andrzej Wajda on Katyń [2007] is unbelievable, as is his work with Polanski on The Pianist,” she says. “He has a particular sensitivity to story, and to this kind of story, and it’s a very European sensibility that I wanted to bring to this film.

“I didn’t know him personally,” she adds, “but I had heard from others that he was kind and compassionate, and to me, that counts for a lot.”

Coincidentally, Edelman had also previously worked with Winslet, on All the King’s Men (AC Oct. ’06) and Carnage (2011). When Kuras sent him the script for Lee, “I knew from the first moment this was a fantastic project,” he says. “I enjoyed the script immensely, and the prospect of working with Kate again was a great joy and honor for me.”

Once the film was greenlit, Edelman and Kuras spent several days getting to know each other and reading through the script at his home in Poland. “We had a lot in common,” he recalls. “We are both cinematographers, we are from the same generation, we have Polish roots, and we like similar films and music. We also have similar characters — we are open-minded, we like people, and we are both straightforward. I knew we would work well together.”

You’ll find the complete production story on shooting this film in our October issue:

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