Cast:
Barbara Loden (Wanda Goronski), Michael Higgins (Norman Dennis), Frank Jourdano (The soldier), Valerie Manches (The girl in the roadhouse), Dorothy Shupenes (Wanda's sister), Peter Shupenes (Wanda's brother-in-law), Jerome Thier (Wanda's husband), Marian Thier (Miss Godek), Anthony Rotell (Tony), and M. L. Kennedy (Judge) Written and Directed by Barbara Loden.
Review:
"When I made Wanda, I didn't know anything about consciousness raising or women's liberation. That had just started when the film was finished. The picture was not about women's liberation. It was really about the oppression of women, of people... Being a woman is unexplored territory, and we're pioneers of a sort, discovering what it means to be a woman."
Being one of a kind is a curious thing, particularly when the one involves a solitary film made by a director. Barbara Loden was born in North Carolina with an isolated upbringing before moving to New York, where she started out as a model and chorus-line dancer when she moved to New York to escape her isolated upbringing. Loden became interested in acting through Paul Mann, who taught the Method form at the Actors Studio (after spending years without a nerve to act); she started with The Ernie Kovacs Show in 1955 and started a handful of appearances on the stage two years later. She did not appreciate acting in film, but she appeared in two of Elia Kazan's features with Wild River (1960) and Splendor in the Grass (1961). Of course, her most famous role might actually be her performance in the 1964 production of After the Fall, which won her a Tony Award that year. This would be her only theatrical effort, although she would direct two educational shorts for the Learning Corporation of America. Loden died in 1980 at the age of 48, having suffered from breast cancer.
Wanda has been compared to being more similar to John Cassavetes in tone as opposed to features that she considered "slick" when it comes to making a movie involving a woman joining up with a robber on the run. Rather than making a movie that was "too perfect to be believable" in slick technique. In fact, she later stated that it was the "anti-Bonnie and Clyde" (whether one actually believes that film to be unrealistic is debatable). Loden aimed for cinema vérité, complete with filming in 16mm. Of course, instead of filming in the South, she had to shoot closer and settled for the mining towns of Carbondale and Scranton in Pennsylvania. It was both inspired by a newspaper account of a female accomplice who thanked a judge when sent to jail for her crime and also semi-autobiographical. The movie was made by a crew of four people: Loden, Nicolas T. Proferes, and two crewmen as lighting/sound assistants. Proferes was the cinematographer and editor, and he helped Loden was framing and compositing a majority of the shots. Apparently, the wardrobe for Higgins was a collection of Elia Kazan's old clothes.
The only people to talk about in this movie is Loden and Higgins, since they are the only professionals present and as such are the ones engaging with a variety of improvised scenes together. There is a curious duet present with two characters who are essentially spiraling into nothingness in different ways, bereft of any expectations of chemistry with accompanying numbness. Loden moves through her scenes with the energy of a mannequin that is aptly appropriate for a film like this, while Higgins forms the other side of the coin of born losers, filled with stubborn pride that refuses to stay down. With 103 minutes, one might not find many surprises within narrative, but it does stay on level with its aim of aimlessness that means predictability for the right occasions - no real start, no real ending, no problem. Look, do you want a movie about an ordinary person with no intentional redeeming qualities? Do you want a film that is "one of a kind"? Well, at least one can get the chance, since it was recently restored by the efforts of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The movie did receive a bit of attention upon release (it won the International Critics' Prize for Best Film at the 31st Venice International Film Festival), but it lapsed into obscurity for a number of years with varying discussions over its content, where one critic described the main character as a "sad, ignorant slut" (no, not written by a man, but there was one who said "nobody likes a victim", so...), but there were small arguments made for the film as a work of feminism. I myself can't exactly say the film is a masterpiece, because one knows there are more engaging films out there within the perspective of a woman, but it certainly strikes well as an achievement for all one-shot wonders out there who want to get their story out there. It is the film for folks who aren't looking for tension or "slickness", and the overall content would suggest that Loden did succeed. Saying it is "good enough" seems just about right for this film.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: The Other Side of the Underneath.
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