When I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg again a few years ago, it struck me: it’s exactly the same ending as in Splendor in the Grass. I adore that film. It’s one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever seen in the cinema. And the end scene is exactly the same as in Umbrellas. He is on the farm, with his dungarees, his wife, the child and she comes back…it was so moving to see that resemblance. I think it is one of the maddest, most audacious films on the subject of love. Particularly for a man to bring a young woman to life in such a way! Splendor in the Grass is so much about unbridled love. The idea that loving can make you insane. That is what happens: you become insane! Going as far as to see her leave for the hospital, because she is dying of love, she wants to die! That film knocked me over. - Catherine Deneuve
Natalie Wood photographed at Malibu Beach, Earl Leaf, 1956.
“Natalie plays a scene for laughs on the set of Sex and the Single Girl. “I’m much better in sad things than in comedies,” she mused in a 1966 journal entry. “My goal is to be able to convincingly play a happy lady.”
Natalie Wood photographed by Bill Ray on the set of Sex and the Single Girl (1964)
A candid shot of Natalie Wood at the premiere of “Splendor in the Grass,” circa 1961.
Natalie Wood photographed in her Laurel Canyon home, circa 1956.
Natalie Wood photographed in costume onboard a bus-turned dressing room for “Love With the Proper Stranger,” 1963. John Bettmann.
Natalie Wood in a film still from “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” 1969.
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) dir. Nicholas Ray