Film Review: "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind" (2020)

"The greatest roles of her life were behind the scenes." This is Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind. This documentary film directed by Laurent Bouzereau. The film explores Wood’s life and career through the unique perspective of her daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, and others who knew her best. The film features previously unseen home movies, photographs, diaries, letters and artifacts, as well as intimate interviews with her friends, family, co-stars and colleagues; re-examining her personal and professional triumphs and challenges, which have often been overshadowed by her tragic death at age forty-three.

On July 20, 1938, Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, California. The Russian-American began acting in films at age four and was given a co-starring role at age eight in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). As a teenager, she earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), followed by a role in John Ford's The Searchers (1956). Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962), and she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Her career continued with films such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Inside Daisy Clover (1964), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). During the 1970s, Wood began a hiatus from film and had a child with husband Robert Wagner, whom she had previously married and divorced. Wagner and Wood remarried after she divorced her second husband. She appeared in only three films throughout the decade, but did act in several television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she received a Golden Globe Award. Wood's films represented a "coming of age" for her and for Hollywood films in general.

Critics have suggested that her cinematic career represents a portrait of modern American womanhood in transition, as she was one of the few to take both child roles and those of middle-aged characters. On November 29, 1981, at the age of forty-three, Wood drowned off Catalina Island. The events surrounding her death have been explained by conflicting witness statements, prompting the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, under the instruction of the coroner's office, to list her cause of death as "drowning and other undetermined factors" in 2012. In 2018, Wagner was named as a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into her death.

A stimulating, entertaining and vast documentary in the exploration of a legendary Hollywood star. As informative and captivating as all the material on display here is, it rushes by far too quickly. This could be seen as a positive: so engrossing is the film that you won't believe how quickly it's over. Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind is, in the end, a compelling examination of Natalie Wood - her on-screen persona, her personal life, and her legacy.

Simon says Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind receives:

Also, see my review for Five Came Back.