Calling Hedy Lamarr

This documentary both reveals and hides a lot of things about arguably the most beautiful actress ever to appear on the silver screen, Hedy Lamarr.

Featuring her son Anthony Loder's attempt to come to an understanding of his difficult and distant mother, it is punctuated throughout by the exploitation of Hedy's invention (which led to wireless communications of all types from CB radio to mobile phones) - using old film clips of the lady herself on the telephone, tapes of her voice, and a number of women of all shapes, sizes, and ages, auditioning to portray her with the persistent line 'I'm Hedy Lamarr'.

The film considers Hedy's move from Austria (where under her original name, Hedwig Kiesler, she made the notorious 'Extase') to Hollywood where she considered an actress only had to 'stand still and look stupid' to be beautiful and successful. It looks at her lonely days post-stardom - when she sought to patch her fading looks with too many plastic surgery operations and became semi-reclusive.

What is clear from this documentary is that 'Hedy Lamarr' masked a clever and courageous woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and who used her brains to leave something far more useful that a body of film work. The fact that she signed her patents away meant that only a few years before her 2000 death could the truth be revealed, and Anthony Loder has done a good job here to present a balanced portrait of his mother - leaving the inevitable questions and leaving her some of the mystique Hollywood lent her.