Hedy Lamarr's best known film was one of her early works. "Ecstasy," shot in 1933, and thus five years before Lamarr's first appearance in a Hollywood film, was a Czech-German production directed by Gustav Machaty. "Ecstasy" is the story of a young woman named Eva, played by Hedy Lamarr (then still known as Hedy Kiesler), who is unhappily married to a much older man, and who falls in love with Adam, a young man full of the joys of life.
The tremendous fame of "Ecstasy" is due above all to a single scene in which the audience sees Hedy Lamarr swimming nude in a lake and then running through a nearby forest. This sequence - lasting several minutes - is considered the first nude scene in cinematic history and caused a worldwide scandal in the 1930s. "Ecstasy" was then banned in many countries of the world - most notably in the US - or only a radically expurgated version of it was permitted to be shown.
| Excerpts from "Ecstasy" used with kind permission from Thomas Sessler Verlag / Wien-Film.
All rights reserved. For more information contact: Maria Teuchmann
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