Wanda
Barbara Loden, U.S., 1970, 102 min.
Find streaming options on JustWatch
With her first and only feature 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. An until now 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.
Intro and discussion by Cait Lore, film critic for Cinema St. Louis’ blog, The Lens.
Wanda
Barbara Loden, U.S., 1970, 102 min.
Find streaming options on JustWatch
With her first and only feature 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. An until now 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.
Intro and discussion by Cait Lore, film critic for Cinema St. Louis’ blog, The Lens.