Directed by:
Barbara LodenScreenplay:
Barbara LodenCinematography:
Nicholas T. ProferesCast:
Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins, Dorothy Shupenes, Peter Shupenes, Jerome Thier, Marian Thier, Nicholas T. Proferes, Anthony Rotell, Valerie MamchesVOD (3)
Plots(1)
With her first and only film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—Barbara Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bringing to life a kind of character seldom seen on-screen. Set amid a soot-choked Pennsylvania landscape, and shot in an intensely intimate vérité style, the film takes up with distant and soft-spoken Wanda (Loden), who has left her husband, lost custody of her children, and now finds herself alone, drifting between dingy bars and motels, where she falls prey to a series of callous men—including a bank robber who ropes her into his next criminal scheme. A difficult-to-see masterpiece that has nonetheless exerted an outsize influence on generations of artists and filmmakers, Wanda is a compassionate and wrenching portrait of a woman stranded on society’s margins. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (1)
This film definitely stands out with its realistic camera work. It gradually gets under your skin because it's possible to identify with the protagonist and the horrifying world she lives in. However, it's also possible to see the film merely as a pose and an attempt to show how difficult the lower classes have it and what they resort to, or how they are dragged down by their apathy. But I lean more towards the first interpretation, which is so grandly named cinema verité.
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