Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes

Nanette Burstein's 2024 documentary rests on long audio recordings Elizabeth Taylor made with a journalist in the sixties. The tapes went unused for years; the documentary uses them as its narration and allows no other voice to comment. At the centre is the distance between Taylor and what was written about her. Talking about her marriages, her illnesses and her relationship with the press, she corrects her own account; some of what she says contradicts the reporting of the time and the film leaves that uncorrected. Burstein arranges the archive footage chronologically. Taylor's campaigning on HIV in the eighties forms the final section, told separately from her career. Who it's for: those interested in Hollywood history and star biography. Who it's not for: viewers expecting an outside assessment; the documentary is confined entirely to its subject's own voice.