Memorable performances raise level of Natalie Wood biopic

It has become an unspoken rule that Hollywood biopics should include a demented witch with bad hair to rival the Joan Crawford of "Mommie Dearest." And so in tonight's "The Mystery of Natalie Wood," at 8 on ABC, we have Mommie severest, sans wire hangers but with tragically tacky bangs, pulling apart a butterfly to scare her child-star daughter into tears for a movie role. Willing to sacrifice Natalie's sanity -- and even her life, during the filming of "The Green Promise" -- just to taste the American dream of fame and fortune, she's a selfish monster. And with a stiff Russian accent and juicy lines such as, "God made her; I invented her," she's great TV.

Of course, without the evil queen, we can't have the sweet princess, and the vulnerable Wood was a Hollywood princess during the height of the 1950s. On screen, she was an icon of both 1950s innocence and its subversive undercurrents, particularly in the movies "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Splendor in the Grass." And off screen, she was a brave but damaged soul who seemed to court every handsome actor with a screen credit. In "The Mystery of Natalie Wood," she is played skillfully by British actress Justine Waddell as a despairing Snow White, a lost soul searching for her identity even on the night of her 1981 drowning.

Thanks to Waddell and Alice Krige's memorable turn as Wood's mother, "The Mystery of Natalie Wood" is a step above most of TV's biopics. Of course, it can't help but skip blithely through its star's life like a stone across the water, in the manner of its genre. After Natalie the demoralized child star, we get a few minutes of Natalie the budding teen on the set of "Rebel Without a Cause," hanging out with James Dean and his Buddy Holly glasses. And then we jump to the mature Natalie, who marries and later remarries the less successful Robert Wagner. Even at three hours, and given confident direction by Peter Bogdanovich, the movie sails from iconic moment to iconic moment.

And like most biopics, "The Mystery of Natalie Wood" also leans heavily on the pathos, aware that to many of today's viewers, Wood is best known for her tragic aura. Like Dean, Wood and her handful of good performances exist in the shadows of her emotional instability and her premature demise, at 43. That's why the last half-hour of the movie sinks into a slow, suspended pace to portray Wood's drowning off Catalina Island. For what feels like an eternity, we watch an ugly, drunken weekend of yachting between Christopher Walken, Wood, and Wagner, culminating in Wood's lonely fall into the water and her weak, persistent cries for help.

"The Mystery of Natalie Wood" has a documentary element to it, as Bogdanovich mixes in real footage of Wood and present-day interviews with some of her friends and relatives, including actor Robert Vaughn and her younger sister, Lana. It's an unnecessary stylistic stroke; if we wanted clips and reminiscence we'd watch A&E's "Biography." Still, it's a testament to the movie and its lead actors that "The Mystery of Natalie Wood" manages to hold its own next to reality.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.