WANDA (1970)

 

Actress Barbara Loden, perhaps best known for her standout performance as Warren Beatty's sister in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961), wrote, directed and starred in this low budget, award winning film. The story takes place in a Pennsylvania mining town. The title character is an inarticulate, irresponsible woman with very little sense of who she is or what she wants from life. At the beginning of the film, Wanda is being divorced by her husband for desertion. She gives up custody of her two small children, telling the judge they would be better off with their father. She goes to a local factory where she once worked to collect wages she is owed. The manager refuses to rehire her because she was too slow on the assembly line. Then she wanders off into a meaningless existence of bars, and one night stands in cheap motels. 

After falling asleep in a movie theater, Wanda wakes up to find that all of her money has been stolen. She goes into a bar and asks the bartender for a glass of water. She doesn't realize that the real bartender is lying on the floor, bound and gagged. The other man is attempting to rob the place. This very strange, uptight character is Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins). With nothing else in particular on her immediate agenda, Wanda attaches herself to this man, and he allows it to happen. Mr. Dennis steals a car, and they go off into the world as a sort of bargain basement Bonnie and Clyde, eventually attempting a bank robbery that, to put it mildly, does not go well.

Loden the writer/director doesn't give Loden the actress all that much to say as Wanda, which seems appropriate for a woman who appears to have very little going on in her brain that might need to be verbalized. Having no goals, plans, or self-esteem, she allows herself to be controlled by Mr. Dennis, who abuses her psychologically, tells her how to dress, and shows her practically no affection. Getting swept into a life of crime isn't a carefully considered life choice for Wanda, but rather a passive acceptance of a situation she finds herself in. Wanda doesn't act. She reacts. She drifts. And when her time with Mr. Dennis is over, she drifts back into the same nothingness she started from.

WANDA has the look and atmosphere of a reality show that might play on late night cable TV after the Zombie Apocalypse has decimated most of Western Civilization. Loden chose to film on location in the Appalachian region of Pennsylvania. The somber, poverty stricken, mine-scarred area is a perfect place for Wanda's story. 

This film, like so many films of this era, is frustrating because of its downbeat ending and lack of any kind of satisfying conclusion. Yet, as a portrait of a woman caught up in a pointless, directionless life, it makes a powerful, haunting impression. When watching this film for the second time, I found myself looking closely at Wanda's face, looking for clues that might indicate some kind of growing personal awareness. Perhaps a glint of self esteem, a sudden regard for her safety and well-being. And maybe a slight concern about her future. But there is nothing. The only times Wanda seems to do the right thing, other than her attempt to resume working in the factory, are when she gives up her children to their father, and later in the film when she tells Mr. Dennis that she's no good. At least she understood that much about herself. It's difficult to know what point Miss Loden was trying to make with this film. But she herself grew up poor in the rural South. Maybe she was telling the story of someone she once knew very well.

WANDA won the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1970.