Wanda (1970) A Glimpse of the Real New Hollywood? (Review)

April 17th sees the release to the Criterion Collection of Wanda, the first and only feature film from Barbara Loden, actor and wife of Elia Kazan. A landmark in US cinema’s independent movement, Wanda is set in the unglamorous sooty surroundings of eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial heartlands and features a central protagonist seldom seen in the movies. As well as writing and directing the movie, Loden stars as the titular heroine, a passive and aimless figure whose first action is considered unthinkable by many within society – she relinquishes the rights to her children to their father, arguing that they are better served by him. Following this non-maternal act, Wanda finds herself drifting through life, between dingy bars and motels, and into the arms of Norman, a bank robber she dutifully calls “Mr Dennis”, who convinces her to participate in his criminal schemes.

When we think of Hollywood in the 1970s, we think of an industry populated by wunderkinds taking risks and ripping up the rulebook with regard to what audiences expect from the movies. The notion of a woman inveigled into a life of crime was certainly not a new one in the New Hollywood of the era; the film that arguably started the movement, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, would set the template in 1967, whilst Terrence Malick, one of the movement’s key, celebrated figures, sought to dramatise another real-life delinquent crime spree, the Starkweather-Fugate killings, in 1973’s Badlands. A year later, Steven Spielberg made his de facto theatrical debut in 1974 with The Sugarland Express, a movie that saw Goldie Hawn spring her husband William Atherton from jail and abscond with their son from foster care. But where Wanda differs is in its admirable refusal to conform to the expectations of mainstream entertainment – something that not even the bold young Turks of New Hollywood dared to attempt.

Loden’s film is populated by non-actors and imbued with an intimate vérité style that recalls a European social or neo-realist sensibility in keeping with the blue-collar surroundings the narrative operates within. This approach, the closest comparison I can think of in terms of Hollywood contemporaries at that time being John Cassavetes (though Loden herself singled out Andy Warhol for inspiration, at least visually), greatly helps what is surely one of Loden’s principle aims with Wanda, namely to deglamourise and unromanticise crime and a life on the run. Again this is something that makes Wanda stand out from those New Hollywood movies I have previously referenced. In researching her film, and principally the dysfunctional, unequal relationship Wanda shares with Norman (Michael Higgins, the only other professional actor in the piece), Loden read several memoirs and non-fiction books relating the upbringings of sex workers, lighting upon one woman’s unusual reaction towards a domineering foster mother; “(she was) the first person who ever told (her) what to do. She appreciated it, even though the woman was mean”. Loden argues that a passive character such as Wanda will naturally navigate towards abusive and controlling figures as a means of coming to terms with their own existence and place in the world. Her natural submissive nature repels the role of loving mother and housewife and the domesticated authority that brings in favour of being someone’s doormat instead.

Anyone expecting the character of Wanda to find independence on the road will be sadly disappointed. Though the movie was made against the backdrop of feminism’s second wave, making a movie about liberation was emphatically not what Loden was about. Wanda depicts a protagonist who swaps one form of personal oppression for another and seems doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again. As a voice, Loden is really interesting because, whilst her contemporaries and sisters were arguing that the glass ceiling could be, must be, smashed, she dared to speak up for a woman with no such ambition. A woman for whom feminism happens elsewhere and to other people. There is no self-discovery in Wanda and the character hasn’t the emotional skills or privilege to examine and reflect upon her motivations or identity. It’s important to remember that the impetus for making Wanda was a newspaper article Loden chanced upon which related how a woman thanked a judge for her custodial sentence because it afforded her a reprieve from her daily life. Wanda herself will reveal to the snarling Norman that she is “already dead”; life means nothing to her but a drudgery with no appeal or appreciation of why it is this way. If Wanda is a feminist movie, then it’s an intersectional one, mindful and sympathetic to her circumstances on the periphery of society’s margins.

As ever Criterion has blessed their release with a plethora of extras. These include a sixty-minute documentary from Katja Raganelli entitled I Am Wanda which includes an interview with Loden recorded in 1980 just months before her untimely death from cancer, an audio recording of her speaking to students at the AFI in 1971 and an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show from the same year. There’s also an educational short from 1975 starring Loden called The Frontier Experience which details a pioneer woman’s struggle for survival, the inevitable trailer and (unavailable to this author) a booklet essay from film critic Amy Taubin.

Mark’s Archive: Wanda (1970)