The New Yorker:

A new documentary based on 1964 interviews lays bare the gap between private self and public image.

By Richard Brody

The art of storytelling is the art of simplification—of giving smooth contours and sharp points to messily loose-ended incidents. That’s why, when artists tell their life stories, the plethora of factual details is secondary to the emotions, the ideas, the insights, and the sublime style that distinguish their art. So it is with Nanette Burstein’s documentary “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes,” which is built around a series of audio interviews with Taylor from 1964, by the Life magazine journalist Richard Meryman. In them, Taylor reflects, at thirty-two, on the tumultuous life she’d been leading, as a Hollywood actress, since childhood. Without hearing the unedited tapes, it’s impossible to know what Burstein has left out (or what Taylor and Meryman avoided talking about), but what comes into focus in Taylor’s keen-edged anecdotes and reflections, is the studio system in which she worked. “The Lost Tapes” (which streams on Max starting August 3rd) not only unfolds the inner life of a movie star but also puts under intense scrutiny the very nature of Hollywood—the distinction between the art of movies and the distortions wrought when studios transform that art into big business.

Burstein keeps the movie’s focus on its main source—Taylor’s voice. Her words are often heard over footage of a reel-to-reel tape recorder, in a way that draws attention to the power of her voice. Burstein further emphasizes voices by offering no talking-head interviews; supplementary interviews (including with the actor Roddy McDowall, Taylor’s friend Doris Brynner, and agent Marion Rosenberg) are heard but not seen. The soundtrack unfolds over a judicious and often poignant selection of archival footage (including home movies, promotional reels, and news reports) and still photographs. The method is effective; “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” is no radical advance in documentary form, but its emphasis on the auditory over the visual subtly suggests the disconnect between a private individual and her public image.

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