Natalie Wood documentary review: HBO film focuses on her life and loves

“Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind” discusses the movie star as both a talented actress and a tabloid favorite. | Bill Ray/HBO

Natalie Wood was so famous for so long, it’s hard to believe she was just 43 when she drowned near Santa Catalina Island in California in 1981.

A true movie star through and through, with a face the camera loved and a world of talent, Wood was just 8 years old when she played the Santa Claus-doubting Susan in “Miracle on 34th Street” and only 17 when she co-starred with James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.” By her mid-20s, Wood had received three Academy Award nominations and had become a tabloid favorite after marrying and divorcing Robert Wagner and having high-profile romances with the likes of Warren Beatty and Frank Sinatra and Michael Caine.

For all of Wood’s memorable performances, from the aforementioned films to “Splendor in the Grass” to “Inside Daisy Clover” to “This Property Is Condemned” to the acclaimed miniseries remake of “From Here to Eternity,” when we hear the name “Natalie Wood,” we can’t help but think about the endless gossiping about her death. As Wood’s daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner says at the outset of the HBO documentary “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind,” there’s been “so much speculation and focus on how she died, that it’s overshadowed her life’s work and who she was as a person.”

Laurent Bouzereau does a fine job of directing this relatively straightforward look at Natalie’s life and times, but it’s Natasha, who was just 11 when her mother died, who is the on-camera guide. She interviews her stepfather, Robert Wagner; Natalie’s longtime friends and fellow actors Mia Farrow and Robert Redford, and her biological father, the British agent-turned-film producer Richard Gregson, who was battling Parkinson’s and passed away shortly after filming.

Redford says, “I owe the beginning of my career to her,” after Wood insisted on the then little-known actor as her co-star for “Inside Daisy Clover” (1965) and again on “This Property Is Condemned” (1966). Gregson tells Natasha he screwed up royally by having an affair with Natalie’s secretary and getting thrown out of the house. We see a bounty of archival and home movie footage, from talk show appearances to Natalie marrying Robert Wagner in 1957 and then again in 1972, to Natalie hosting parties filled with family and friends, to Natalie doting on her little girls. Friends and loved ones speak glowingly of her dedication as a mother, her fights for equal treatment of women on film sets, her blazing talent when she was cast in just the right role. (The doc also acknowledges Wood wasn’t right for the part of Maria in “West Side Story.” Natasha says, rightfully, “Today she would never be cast in the role … but it was a different time.”)

Natalie Wood with daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner in Hawaii in 1978.

The most touching sequences feature Natasha and her stepfather Robert Wagner (still dashing at 90), who has remained close to her all these years. There’s a sparkle in R.J.’s eyes as he talks about his love for Natalie, and great pain in those eyes when he recounts the details of what happened on their yacht the night Natalie died. Wagner talks of getting into a heated, alcohol-fueled argument with Natalie’s “Brainstorm” co-star Christopher Walken, of Natalie leaving to go to bed, of frantically trying to find her once he realized she was missing, of being told, “We found her … she’s dead,” and of going home and taking Natasha in his arms (“You were at the bottom of the stairs, remember”) and telling her the tragic news.

“We were all together,” says Natasha of herself, her half-sister Courtney and Wagner.

“And we’ve all been together,” says Wagner. “Thank God.”