HBO documentation proves that Faye Dunaway and Elizabeth Taylor are unparalleled Hollywood icons

There is something that unites the recent documentaries ‘Faye’ and ‘Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes’. It’s not just that they both played on HBO — “Faye” launched in July, while “Elizabeth Taylor” premieres Aug. 3 — or that both center on the stories of legendary, Oscar-winning artists. Faye is, of course, Faye Dunaway, from “Network” and “Chinatown,” while Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most decadent media-hounded figures of the 20th century, needs virtually no introduction.

What the films have in common, however, is a poignant and sometimes painful double desire. In the documentaries, Dunaway – still with us at 83 and recently interviewed for this film – and Taylor – who died in 2011 but whose ‘lost tapes’ catalog an extensive 1964 debriefing with journalist Richard Meryman – both express doubt, fear and even fear. shame about career missteps, misplaced projects and the way their private problems played out in public view. The viewer sympathizes with them, firstly because they are human, and secondly because their way of expressing their emotions is so extravagantly more than human. That’s the other longing underlying these documentaries: the sense that culture can no longer produce great actresses who are also stars who shine so brightly.

Fortunately, both films are packed with film fragments and both give an idea of ​​the style of their respective subjects. In director Laurent Bouzereau’s direction in “Faye,” Dunaway, at her best, uses a bracing sense of control to shock the viewer all the more when she snaps in grand fashion. (The famous photo of her on the morning after winning her Oscar – used as the main image in this column – staring down the middle distance is an excellent example of her powers: we see, through exhaustion and excitement, a woman in complete control of the image she wants to present.) In interviews with the press, Dunaway, although she seems to hold back her feelings, has a ruthless erudition and speed that makes it clear how much of herself is in the brilliant director of “Network” or “Chinatown’s” difficult femme fatale. Her interview for the documentary feels like a kind of letting go, an unburdening of thoughts that she may have withheld from the press until now. But the clarity of thought remains intact.

Meanwhile, filmmaker Nanette Burstein shows Taylor, despite the excesses of her fame, carrying herself onscreen with a droll self-deprecation, a cunning that feels like she’s decades ahead of her time. We’re told that Taylor was 32 when she played the fifty-something Martha in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, and while her physical transformation for the role is indeed impressive, it’s the changes in her soul and behavior – her willingness to deal with to show her off. signs of old age in a kind of ironic self-mockery – that feels very remarkable.

And both actors are starting to open up about the setbacks in their careers and personal natures, including the fact that the public comes to pigeonhole them. Dunaway opens up about her bipolar diagnosis and her struggles with alcohol, both things that derailed her ability to rely on her great gift, her clear and precise thinking. (Both have also led to her outsized reputation as a difficult colleague – her calm giving way to a great pause isn’t just something that happened for Dunaway on screen.) And we also get an explanation as to why ‘Mommie Dearest’ – the infamous bombshell that brought down her career – was such a serious disappointment. Dunaway believed she really found something sharp and true in her portrayal of Joan Crawford as an abusive mother, and lost herself so deeply in the role that, lacking a surer directorial hand, she couldn’t find her way to coherence. Others speaking in “Faye,” including her son, are in a better position than Dunaway to assess why she finds the failure of a particular project so difficult. Although she did an extensive interview near the end of her life, she was shy of publicity, but Dunaway poured her personal setbacks and challenges into her work. Rejecting her might be the same as rejecting her.

Meanwhile, Taylor speaks with sharp candor about, for example, her distaste for the film “Butterfield 8” (for which she won her first Oscar, which Taylor attributes to sympathy for the health problems she endured) and the dramas of filming “Cleopatra,” which she made with Richard Burton, one of the loves of her life. Taylor and Burton – two stars with exaggerated appetites, talents and passions – walked the world. But their fame brought its own frustrations for someone who first wanted to tell stories: “It’s a losing game!” Taylor tells Meryman. “People already have a fixed image. They want to believe the good or the bad. And when you try to explain it, you lose yourself along the way.”

And we see Taylor’s portrayal of herself as someone increasingly willing to show her frustration to the press. Asked, during a joint press conference with Burton, about her relationship with ex-husband Eddie Fisher, Taylor snaps: “Do you read the papers, honey? I suggest you do that,” then rolls her eyes and throws her head back. Later, she tells a “60 Minutes” reporter that “fighting is one of the greatest exercises in being together in marriage”; when the journalist asks if Burton is dominating her in their marriage, she opens those famous eyes and blurts out, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” That it almost seems impulsive, rather than the constant press approach of someone eager to convey her weariness to the rapacity of the press, is a sign of how gifted an actress Taylor was.

“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” methodically constructs a case for Taylor as a genius, both in performing on screen and in performing for a type of media that no longer exists. Both Dunaway, an actress who made it a point to reveal as little as possible, and Taylor, someone willing to give it all away – but with a wink that made the consumer aware that she was seeing herself being consumed – existed in a media climate. both rougher and more predictable than today’s.

That media climate was cruel and heartbreaking for those who became its subjects; it also made legends. Probably no one would trade the current way of writing about actresses, with all its flaws, for the way Dunaway and Taylor are written about. And yet other aspects of the culture were better positioned to create legends. Dunaway, thoughtful, begins to see an impact on the world in the work she made; Taylor used her fame not only for film success, but also for charity activities that were astonishing in their scale and timeliness. (In an extraordinary clip in the Taylor documentary, Taylor explains why she started raising money to fight AIDS: Few spoke out or did anything, and, she says, “it made me so angry that I thought, ‘ Bitch, do something yourself!’”

We don’t make stars these days like we did in the Dunaway and Taylor era. And that’s a good thing. But for all the up-and-coming actors out there who are compelling in their own way, watching these women, in two very strong passages in the celebrity canon, may briefly convince the viewer that we don’t do that anymore. them not at all.

“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” premieres August 3 on HBO and Max; “Faye” is streaming on Max.