1. Plot

2. Cast

3. Production
    Concept  Filming 

4. Release
    Restoration  Home media 

5. Reception

6. Accolades

7. Notes

8. References

9. Sources

10. Further reading

11. External links

• Harry Shuster
• Barbara Loden

• Barbara Loden
• Michael Higgins

Wanda is a 1970 American independent drama film written and directed by Barbara Loden, who also stars in the title role. Set in the anthracite coal region of eastern Pennsylvania, the film focuses on an apathetic woman with limited options who inadvertently goes on the run with a bank robber.

Inspired by her own past feelings of aimlessness as well as a newspaper article detailing a woman's participation in a bank robbery, Loden wrote the screenplay for Wanda before securing financing through Harry Shuster, a Los Angeles-based producer. The film was shot on location with a small crew of around seven people, primarily in eastern Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and much of the dialog and filming was improvised, with Loden only loosely referring to the screenplay.

Plot

Wanda Goronski, an unhappy housewife in rural eastern Pennsylvania, stays on her sister's couch after leaving her husband. Walking across a field of coal and hitching a ride, she shows up to a divorce court hearing late, relinquishes her rights to her children and grants her husband a divorce.

After being terminated from her job at a sewing factory, Wanda runs away with a man with whom she has a one-night stand, only for him to abandon her at an ice cream shop. Nearly penniless, Wanda takes a nap in a movie theater, where she is robbed in her sleep. Going to a bar to use the restroom, she desperately clings to an older man she thinks to be the bartender. The man, Norman Dennis, is a criminal in the process of robbing the bar. Unable to rid himself of Wanda, he takes her on the run with him. Even after learning the details of his lifestyle, Wanda decides to stay with Norman, whom she calls "Mr. Dennis."

Wanda spends some time on the road with Norman, and he becomes physically and emotionally abusive to her. He sends her shopping in a mall for new clothes while he robs cars in the parking lot. They subsequently visit the Holy Land USA theme park, where Norman meets with his Evangelical Christian father, whom he shows courtesy and respect. After, Norman convinces Wanda to be his lookout for a kidnapping and bank robbery. The robbery goes awry, and Norman is shot and killed in the lobby. Wanda escapes undetected, and watches from the street as police descend and onlookers observe the scene.

Alone again, Wanda hitches a ride with a man who attempts to sexually assault her. She escapes and runs through the woods. At nightfall, Wanda arrives at a backwoods roadhouse, where strangers supply her with food, alcohol, and cigarettes.

Cast

• Barbara Loden as Wanda Goronski
• Michael Higgins as Norman Dennis
• Frank Jourdano as The soldier
• Valerie Manches as The girl in the roadhouse
• Dorothy Shupenes as Wanda's sister
• Peter Shupenes as Wanda's brother-in-law
• Jerome Thier as Wanda's husband
• Marian Thier as Miss Godek
• Anthony Rotell as Tony
• M. L. Kennedy as Judge

Production

Concept

Loden said the film was semi-autobiographical and that she was inspired to write it after reading a newspaper report that a woman had thanked a judge after he sentenced her to 20 years in prison for her participation in a bank robbery.^[4] Her husband Elia Kazan claimed to have written the initial script and then "[Loden] rewrote it many times, and it became hers."^[5]

According to Loden, the character of Wanda was "created out of herself."{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=13:30}} "It was sort of based on my own personality," she stated in a 1971 interview, "A sort of passive, wandering around, passing from one person to another, no direction—I spent many years of my life that way and I felt that... well, I think that a lot of people are that way. And not just women, but men too. They don't know why they exist."{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=14:24}} In crafting the relationship between Wanda and Mr. Dennis, the bank robber whom she goes on the run with, Loden avoided integrating any legitimate romance between the characters, as she felt it was unrealistic.{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=41:50}} Wanda's unyielding submissiveness to Mr. Dennis was also partly inspired by a nonfiction book Loden had read about the upbringings of several prostitutes, one of whom recounted finding joy in her foster mother's severe overbearingness, as she was "the first person who ever told [her] what to do. She appreciated it, even though the woman was mean."{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=1:00:17}}

Filming

The film was shot on 16mm stock,^[1] on a budget of roughly $100,000{{efn|Contemporaneous newspaper sources state a budget of $100,000,^[6] though the American Film Institute notes an estimated $115,000 budget.^[1]}} with a crew of four: Loden, cinematographer Nicholas Proferes, who also edited the film, Lars Hedman doing lighting and sound, and production assistant Christopher Cromin.^[7] Loden and Michael Higgins were the only two professional actors in the production and most of their scenes were a result of improvisation.^[8] Loden recalled the logistical elements of the production as proving difficult, and stated that she ended up "using the [actors] as they were" and quit referring to the script shortly after beginning shooting.{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=17:16}} Loden worked for union scale, and Higgins's costumes came from Kazan's castoffs.^[1] Loden said the film's visual style was inspired by several Andy Warhol films.^[9]

The film was financed by Harry Shuster, who formed Bardene International Films specifically to distribute it. Shuster had a one-third interest in the film; the other two-thirds was held by Loden, Kazan, and attorney Milton Kazan's nonprofit Foundation for Filmmakers. Any profits after recoupment that went to the foundation were to be put into a fund to finance future films.^[1]

Originally slated to be set in the South, the high cost of filming there and the production's need to be near the film processing houses in New York City prompted a change to the coal-mining regions of Pennsylvania.^[1] Location shooting took place in fall 1969 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and Waterbury, Connecticut.^[1] Several of the performers who appear in the film were non-actors who were arbitrarily asked to partake in the film; among these are the man Wanda speaks with in the film's opening sequence on the coal field, as well as the actor portraying Mr. Dennis's father, whom Loden and Proferes invited to play the part after finding him in a local retirement home in Carbondale.{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=26:39}} The final scene was filmed at an actual roadhouse in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=28:40}} Loden filmed an alternate ending in which Wanda is accosted by the police at the roadhouse, but she ultimately deemed it "too corny" and opted to conclude the film with a morose Wanda being regaled by the local tavern patrons.{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=30:18}}

Post-production of Wanda occurred in Loden's home.^[1]

Release

Restoration

In 2007, the Hollywood Film and Video laboratory in Los Angeles formally closed, and began purging film elements from its archive dating to the 1950s.^[10] The original 16mm Kodak Ektachrome ECB film elements of Wanda were uncovered during this purging, and subsequently acquired by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, saving them from being disposed of in a landfill.^[10] The film elements were restored, and the film was subsequently screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010.^[10]

In August 2018, the film was re-released theatrically in Los Angeles.^[11]

Home media

Reception

From Loden's recollection, European critics who saw the film during its premiere at the Venice Film Festival interpreted the film as a political statement on the existential nature of American life, which she refuted.{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=14:55}} Critics Judith Crist, Kathleen Carroll, and Pauline Kael wrote unfavorably of the film, recounted by Loden as they disliked the protagonist for being "dumb, and stupid, and all the things people used to say about me...  I think they're jealous, I really do...  They were so vicious, it went over call of duty."{{sfn|Loden|1971|loc=57:00}}

Upon its American theatrical release in 1971, the New York Daily News awarded the film two and a half out of four stars, noting Wanda as a "sharply-etched" character, but concluded that the film "remains a rather pointless dirge, for there never is any question that Wanda will end her journey from no-place to nowhere."^[14] Jean Dietrich of the Louisville Courier-Journal praised the film for its portrayal of its characters, writing: "Wanda is a classic loser, underprivileged and underintelligent, who, in her hopelessness, turns to prostitution. Miss Loden's performance of this pathetic creature will stick with me, I think, forever...  nothing is more depressing than empty, stunted lives, and Miss Loden shows a sincere concern in recording them so honestly."^[15]

The film is a favorite of actress Isabelle Huppert and she championed its release in France in 2004 on DVD.^[17] The film has also been cited as a favorite by filmmaker John Waters, who presented it as his annual selection within the 2012 Maryland Film Festival.

The film was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Film Foundation and Gucci, and screened at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. The film has a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 19 reviews with an average rating of 7.7/10.^[18]

In a retrospective review, Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "To say that Wanda deglamorizes the American crime film is both entirely accurate and something of an understatement. Loden’s first and only film as a director is a searingly honest character study whose jagged, unvarnished aesthetic—inspired in part by Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and the films of Andy Warhol—stood in stark contrast to the slick Hollywood dramatic tradition epitomized by, among others, Loden’s husband, the director Elia Kazan."^[11]

Accolades

Notes

References

Sources

• {{cite book|editor1-last=Horwath|editor1-first=Alexander|editor2-first=Thomas|editor2-last=Elsaesser|editor3-first=Noel|editor3-last=King|year=2004|title=The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s|ref=harv|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|location=Amsterdam|isbn=978-9-0535-6631-2}}
• {{cite interview|last=Loden|first=Barbara|date=April 2, 1971|title=Barbara Loden at the American Film Institute|ref=harv|medium=Audio interview|publisher=The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray, pub. 2019)|interviewer=Harold Lloyd Master}}

Further reading

• {{cite journal|last=Melton|first=Ruby |year=1971|title=Barbara Loden on Wanda – 'An Environment that Is Overwhelmingly Ugly and Destructive'|journal=Film Journal|volume=1|issue=2|pages=11–15}}
• {{cite book|last=Reynaud|first=Bérénice |year=2004 |chapter=For Wanda |editor-last1=Elsaesser |editor-first1=Thomas |editor-last2=Horwath|editor-first2=Alexander |editor-last3=King |editor-first3=Noel|title=The Last Great American Picture Show|location=Amsterdam|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|pages=223-247 |url=http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/wanda/|isbn=9789053566312}} (also published in Senses of Cinema)

External links

• {{IMDb title|0067961|Wanda}}
• {{AFI film|54243|Wanda}}
• {{Tcmdb title|95043|Wanda}}
• {{Allmovie title|115895|Wanda}}
• {{Rotten Tomatoes|wanda}}

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