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 impresses with how realistically it is shot. It gradually gets under your skin because it is possible to identify with the heroine and the terrifying world she lives in. However, it's also possible to see the film as a certain pose and an attempt to show how difficult life is for the lower classes and what they resort to or are dragged into by their apathy. But I lean more towards the first option, which is grandiosely called cinéma vérité.
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