A very rare screening for Barbara Loden’s only film as director, a forgotten masterpiece which as only recently taken its rightful place in the canon. Loden was an actress protege of Elia Kazan (you can spot her as Montgomery Clift’s secretary in Wild River), but her handful of film roles can only hint at the sensitivity and depth which bloomed in this vérité-style portrait of an inarticulate country girl — played by Loden herself — who takes up with a petty thief (“It’s the anti-Bonnie and Clyde“, Loden said). Marguerite Duras described her performance as “sacred, powerful, violent and profound.”
A revelation… Here was an American movie that picked up where Italian neo-realism had left off, applying its moral principles and aesthetics to rural American backwaters, with an absence of the sentimentality that had derailed so many postwar European films. Here was an American depiction of outlaws that refused to glamorize (think of Wanda as Loden’s retort to Bonnie and Clyde and to Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie as a fashion icon). And most importantly, here was a feminist film that made visible a woman who had internalized society’s contempt for her so deeply that it was impossible for her to speak or act for herself.
Amy Taubin
Writer-director-actor Barbara Loden’s 1970 feature has a wonderful, hard-won sense of everyday rapture.
Chuck Bowen, Slant
If there is a female counterpart to John Cassavetes, Barbara Loden is it.
Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Wanda is precisely the kind of independent, deeply personal project that American film making badly needs.
Jay Cocks, Time (1971)
Barbara Loden
Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins
USA
1970
English
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Harry Shuster
Screenwriter
Barbara Loden
Cinematography
Nicholas T. Proferes
Editor
Nicholas T. Proferes
Also in This Series
Getting Real charts the evolution of screen acting in American film from 1945-1980, diving into the psychological realism which took audiences somewhere deeper and more authentic than ever before.
A Streetcar Named Desire
"I don't want realism. I want magic!" declares Blanche du Bois, the tragic heroine who meets her nemesis in her sister's husband, Stanley Kowalski, in Tennessee Williams' great play. Brando's performance as Stanley is a turning point in American acting.
On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando's definitive performance as Terry Malloy, a New York dockworker (and once a promising boxer) who loses faith in his union and his smarter but corrupt older brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) after a whistleblower is murdered.
East of Eden
Salinas, 1917. Cal Trask's forlorn attempts to win the affection of his self-righteous father (Raymond Massey) represented James Dean's first leading role in the cinema, and his emotionally raw performance ennobled misunderstood youth everywhere.
Rebel Without a Cause
Kids turned bad in the 1950s -- and their newly comfortable middle-class parents couldn't understand why. Ray points the finger right back at them: "You're tearing me apart!" rails Jim Stark (James Dean), speaking for his generation.
Giant
This was the Yellowstone of its time: a big, sweeping modern Western built around an imposing ranch and family dynamics -- except Giant is much more subversive. James Dean strikes it rich as Jett Rink, much to the disgust of his former boss, Rock Hudson.
The Fugitive Kind
Sidney Lumet's movie brings together two of the greatest actors of the period, Brando and Anna Magnani, reason enough to check out this underrated poetical drama about a handsome musician who washes up in a small southern town.
Hud
Landmark modern western with Brandon de Wilde from Shane worshipping the wrong hero, Paul Newman’s eponymous heel. According to Paul Schrader, this movie marks the birth of the cynical (anti-)hero in American cinema.
Wild River
Tennessee Valley Authority man Montgomery Clift finds derision from the locals, love from the war widow Lee Remick, and obduracy from matriarch Jo Van Fleet, who just won’t leave that scheduled-to-be-flooded farm.