Wanda

These sort of movies tend to be or get pretentious and annoying pretty easily but not this one though, which makes this simply a good and perfectly watchable little movie.

I wouldn't even call this movie an independent one. It's being more one that feels and look like it got shot guerrilla style, so without any planning and preparations to it. They simply shot stuff on the spot, with the available equipment and actors and would also improvise most of their lines. That at least was the feeling this movie gave me but I don't actually know if this truly was the case for this movie.

The approach definitely adds to the realistic feeling of the movie. It's being a random slice of life if you will, though it still is very much following a type of story that you will only see in a movie. The characters and the way how they are handling certain situations still make sure that the movie feels like a realistic one.

But because of it that the movie feels like it got done guerrilla style, the movie also doesn't have the best looking and sounding quality to it. The sound is simply just bad at times and the cinematography also really isn't being anything all too special or stylish to watch. Guess they thought that in this cast the story and the storytelling would be enough to create a great movie with but I just still missed far too many (basic) movie-making ingredients in this movie, that can make a movie of this sort great for me.

And lets face it, the main reason why this movie still floats around is because it got directed, written and stars Barbara Loden, who was married to legendary film-maker Elia Kazan, making this a bit of a curiosity piece perhaps. But really, there is not much about this movie that stands out. It's being a good and original little movie within its genre but I only wished that the movie also would had had more to offer, with its main story and characters perhaps. I simply didn't got an awful lot out of this movie but I can at least say about this movie that I was never annoyed or bored with it.

Definitely a watchable and good movie but just nothing to run out for, in my opinion.

7/10

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It begins with the office clerk telling Wanda she is "too slow in every working process". Wanda loses her job. Her husband also doesn't want her anymore. He wants the divorce and the children. Wanda is asked by the judge if she agrees with the divorce. She says it doesn't matter. Wanda makes a journey. She goes to the cinema, meets a guy, sleeps with him and he leaves her. The movie goes on.

Wanda goes into a bar. There is no barkeeper but a robber who ties the barkeeper. He tells Wanda to leave. She stays. The man, Mr. Dennis, takes her into his apartment. There is something like a relationship that develops between Mr. Dennis and Wanda though Mr. Dennis is very rude. He plans a bigger robbery. Wanda wants to help.

Barbara Lodens "Wanda" is a road movie on the road to nowhere. Wanda wants to be part of something and she doesn't know of what. In her eyes we can see the whole emptiness of a not self-determined woman's life. There is not much hope, the last picture of the movie is frozen.

At last! An American director who can ingest European influences maturely, not as a superficial and desperate plea for depth. In its tale of a woman drifting through a barren landscape, falling in with abusive or indifferent men; in its distanced style, its pared down performances and dialogue, its long takes of nothing in particular, or rather, of everything, of life, mundane actions, of people looking and finding and doing; in its use of the crime genre for anti-generic and anti-narrative ends; in its restrained use of religious symbolism culminating in an enigmatic scene in a catacombs, one is reminded of Bresson - less rigorous, maybe, but less misogynistic too, more open.

The central relationship and road movie format reminds me of 'La Strada'; the bank robbery an absurdist take on 'Gun Crazy'. Mostly, this is a wonderful one-off, and it is a real crime that its maker only made this one film, while her husband was allowed over twenty.

Barbara Loden, the wife of film director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and stars in this portrait of a born loser in blue-collar Pennsylvania. Wanda is the perfect bad example: she's poorly educated, unemployed, a doormat for any available man...and when she walks into a bar one night to use the bathroom, she has no idea the lone man inside is actually robbing the place. Loden, who looks like a bedraggled version of Joanne Woodward in some of her hick roles, also helped to raise the funds for this picture, which played film festivals and garnered good critical buzz yet wasn't widely distributed. The uneven sound is fuzzy, the camera-work is all over the place, and the lenient editing allows scenes to ramble on far longer than necessary (also the baby screaming during the film's opening five minutes was a big mistake). However, despite these serious faults, the movie has a realistically squalid, hopeless ambiance that is, at times, touching, pathetic, ingenuous and very natural. A bumpy ride, but worthwhile for fans of character studies. **1/2 from ****

Saw 3/13/17, TCM on demand. Robert Bresson/Chantal Akerman/Frederick Wiseman come to the Pennsylvania coal country. "Wanda" prophetically showcases a world inhabited by a class of people Charles Murray would write about forty years later, as neglected and marginalized then as now. Maybe it's not a film for everybody, but I found myself involved in Wanda's story, a tale of drabness set in a world in a state of persistent, low-energy panic. Loden placed supreme confidence in camera, microphone, story, and her people. And the movie worked for me. The film TCM showed had been lovingly restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2010.