Kim Novak reclaims her story at Venice premiere ahead of Golden Lion

Kim Novak, the 92 year old star of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, is reclaiming her story in a new documentary that premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 1, where she will receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Kim Novak's Vertigo, directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, blends archival footage and intimate new interviews as Novak reflects on her meteoric rise in the 1950s, her abrupt departure from Hollywood in 1966, and the decades she spent as a private painter and horsewoman in Oregon.

Novak spoke on camera about the forces that drove her from the studio system, describing how early fame came with intensive pressures to reshape her image. She told the filmmaker that beauty was a double edged sword. "It still matters too much how we look," she said, calling attention to a career in which makeup chairs and studio heads repeatedly tried to remold performers. Philippe said he framed the 77 minute film not as a conventional career chronicle but as a portrait aimed at uncovering Novak's personal truth.

The film revisits her most famous roles in Picnic, The Man With the Golden Arm and Vertigo, in which Novak played dual characters and later found echoes of her own inner...