Barbara Loden’s Groundbreaking Film ‘Wanda’ Shines in Stunning New Restoration [Review]

While not quite the forgotten masterpiece that some may claim, Barbara Loden’s groundbreaking 1970 independent film “Wanda,” which has just received a brand new re-master and is being released in New York, is nonetheless a stunning debut in the key of early Cassavetes that showed writer/director/actor Loden as an independently minded filmmaker willing to take narrative risks but, still, wasn’t given the chance to fully develop her cinematic voice as she died in only 10 years later in 1980 after battling cancer.

Loden is most famously known for her second marriage to acclaimed director Elia Kazan and her supporting roles in Kazan’s “Wild River” and “Splendor in the Grass,” in addition to her Tony-winning portrayal of Maggie in Kazan’s production of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall.” That winning role, in which Loden portrayed a Marilyn Monroe surrogate in one of Miller’s, frankly, worst plays, was emblematic of Loden’s career in which she was often relegated to the role of pin-up and bombshell.

Yet Loden’s first and only film, “Wanda,” is anything but empty-minded. Shot on 16mm in a naturalistic verité style that presupposes the auteurist run that would dominate film in the 1970s (and would eventually displace Kazan), Loden creates a stunningly realistic portrayal of a woman unable to figure out her place and meaning within her community. Eschewing plot in favor of character study, Loden creates a fully-rounded portrait of a character unable to find her true meaning.

The plot, in short, follows Wanda, a hard-drinking woman, in Pennsylvania coal country that has effectively abandoned her husband and children for a series of one night stands and panhandling. Broke one night and wanting a drink, she stumbles upon Norman Dennis (Michael Higgins) in the middle of a bar robbery. Sensing some purpose in Dennis, she takes off with him on a series of low-stakes robberies, moving from town to town, that eventually culminates in a bank robbery where they take the family of a banker hostage. After making Wanda the getaway driver, Dennis’ scheme, of course, goes awry resulting in a predictably bloody aftermath.

“Wanda,” then, is split into two distinct sections, as she initially stumbles around her hometown, moving from day to day and drink to drink, without any care as to what happens, only worrying about who is going to buy her next beer. When she finally meets Dennis, he not only provides a purpose for Wanda but also begins to slowly take off her life, draining her of whatever autonomy she had, demanding she wears dresses and acts like a lady, renouncing her former low-class lifestyle.

If “Wanda’s” first section recalls Cassavetes’ “Shadows” with its preoccupation on the routines of daily life that define individuals, then the latter half becomes a road movie akin to Spielberg’s latter “The Sugarland Express,” as Wanda becomes more and more displaced the further she gets into petty crime. While, at first, she seems obvious to Dennis’ lifestyle, as she catches on, Loden portrays Wanda’s realization as almost indifference, as if she is repeating variations of her previous lifestyle.

The first half is a stunningly realistic portrayal of how the daily grind of life can beat a person down, with Loden fully inhabiting the role of a beggar who is unable to figure out how to survive. When the film fully switches to the low-fi “Bonnie and Clyde” plot that defines its latter half, Loden somewhat loses the narrative, forgetting the quiet character study that defined the earlier chapters in favor of a literal ticking time bomb story that never quite gels and the film itself doesn’t seem much interested in, as it resolves as quickly as it began. The plot-thread only really serves to push Wanda back to her life drifting through Pennsylvania, allowing Wanda to travel full circle and the film to hammer home its central thesis: life doesn’t drastically change, instead each day repeats variations of itself.

If the film wanders in its latter half, when Wanda finally does return to her hometown in the tail end, Loden sticks the landing, shockingly portraying how little changes in life, as Wanda is sucked back into her old ways. What did she learn from her adventures? Has she changed at all? Loden doesn’t provide any easy answers, instead fully portraying a slice of life that purposely lacks a beginning and an end. Instead, Wanda’s life will continue well after the credits. Does she change? That’s up the viewer to decide. [A-]