Kiesler played a young bride named Eva. Having gone for a liberating naked swim, she meets a strapping engineer (named Adam, of course), and experiences all the pleasures her impotent husband can’t provide. Seen in close-up, Eva gasps, throws back her head and clutches her hair. It’s clear what is being shown – and it had never been shown on the big screen before. Lamarr later said that her apparently blissed-out winces were the result of Machaty jabbing her with a safety pin, but, however the sequence came about, it was convincing enough to cause uproar. The film was denounced by Pope Pius XI, and Kiesler was labelled ‘The Ecstasy Girl’.

From Mussolini to the movies

One of her many new fans was Friedrich Mandl, an armaments manufacturer and the third richest man in Austria. After an eight-week engagement, he and Kiesler were married, and she – still a teenager – was ushered into a life of regal opulence. On one trip to Paris, Mandl asked his wife if she liked the sparkling jewels on display in the window at Cartier. When she nodded, Mandl immediately bought her every one of them. But Kiesler felt “strangled to death by luxury”. Obsessively jealous, Mandl tried to buy and destroy every print of Ecstasy, and he refused to let her visit her friends or go to the theatre. The only role he allowed her was that of a trophy wife, sitting decoratively at the dining table while he talked munitions with his powerful guests, Mussolini included.