WANDA (1970; Restored 2019)
Directed and written by Barbara Loden
Bardene International Films, 103 minutes, R (nudity, language)
★★★
Wanda is a Criterion Collection film that’s a slice of past sociology. It’s also cinema verité done in an unadorned style that drew comparisons to Andy Warhol films, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). It allegedly influenced Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). A Godard analogy is overblown and I’d have to rewatch Ackerman’s film to comment on that, but director/writer Barbara Loden took me back in time–not just to 1970, but to the area where it was filmed.
Loden’s probably isn’t a familiar name. She was an actress, though best known as the wife of auteur Elia Kazan. I mention Kazan because gender is under the microscope in Wanda. Despite the spreading impact of second-wave feminism, it had not yet deeply penetrated American society. In vast swaths of society older gender expectations remained firmly in place. That is, women were expected to shoulder domestic duties, provide sexual release for men, and conform to roles as the “weaker” sex.
Loden’s film centered on such a place: the coal mining region of Northeast Pennsylvania in and around Scranton. This was not the part of Pennsylvania from which I hail, but I know it well and can attest that, in the 1960s and 1970s, it was a dire place, especially for working-class families. Think slag heaps rising in backyards, run-down housing, dirty motels, people fossicking for coal lumps to heat their homes, beaten down residents, Catholic churches, and dive bars. (Brass-and-fern “pubs need not apply!) It was also home to men who felt entitled to a shag, even when it constituted rape.
Wanda (Loden) simply isn’t competent to cope with many aspects of her life. She wanders the coal fields with her hair in curlers, has casual sex with men of all ages and number of teeth, isn’t very smart, and is not cut out to be a wife and the mother of two children. She’s late to her own divorce hearing and when the judge asks her if she’s contesting the divorce just shrugs and says the kids would be better off with her husband. A later scene establishes that she has trouble reading at what we might consider a 3rd or 4th grade level.
With no home or ability to hold down a job, Wanda does what she’s always done–find someone who will treat her (a relative term!) until he turns violent, and then find another. After her divorce she wanders off with little more than the clothes on her back and some money she bummed. After a time, she inadvertently connects with “Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins),” a robber and nobody’s idea of Mr. Congeniality. He’s happy to screw Wanda and use her like a servant, but conversation or tenderness are off the table. One reason for the Godard comparison is the wild and fated road trip they take together. Film scholar Amy Taubin speculated that part of the film’s allure is that it took the sheen off of Bonnie and Clyde, a glamorized look at a crime couple on the lam. If that was Loden’s intent, she accomplished it in spades.
Wanda was made on a shoestring budget–a reported $115,000–and looks it. There is no musical soundtrack, the acting is sometimes stilted, colors are drab, and the entire project was shot in 16mm before being restored and transferred to 35 mm just a few years ago. For all of that, it’s hard to imagine that Loden could have better captured the world of 1970 from the point of view of desperate people looking for hope in a heartless environment. It is indeed cinema verité; Scranton was really that bad and Holy Land in Waterbury, Connecticut was as weird as it looks. Don’t bother searching IMDB for the secondary characters. Some were plucked from the streets and others were one-take minor actors.
Wanda wasn’t widely seen in its day. It got mixed reviews, though it did capture a major prize at a 1970 Venice film festival. It nearly disappeared altogether when a California film archive closed, but a 2010 MoMA showing in New York led to reassessment. My take is that it’s no Godard but is better than most of Warhol’s movies. It’s dated and, for good and ill, shares little in common with slick Hollywood offerings. But you sure can peel away a lot of social history by watching it now.
Rob Weir
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