Title: Wanda
Rating: 4 Stars
Just a short while ago, I watched and wrote about the film Killer of Sheep. In that post, I wrote about neo-realism and how it’s typically inspired in poor, desolate, powerless situations. I’d mentioned Bicycle Thieves, created in the ruins of post World War II Italy and Pather Panchali, created in 1950s rural India. I’d wondered how the concepts of neo-realism would translate to an American filmmaker, given the unprecedented wealth and power of the US.
I didn’t have to wonder very long because shortly after watching Pather Panchali, I watched Killer of Sheep. Pather Panchali was 35th on the BFI Sight and Sound List. Killer of Sheep was ranked 44th. Killer of Sheep was the product of a Black man (Charles Burnett). Given the state of African Americans, especially the ones that he focused on in the Watts neighborhood in 1978, creating a film in the style of neo-realism made perfect sense.
Now, coming in at 48 on the BFI list, is Wanda. It’s another American example of a neo-realistic film. In this case, it was written by, directed by, and starring a woman named Barbara Loden. When you consider the state of women in the US in 1970, a female auteur creating a neo-realistic film makes perfect sense.
Loden stars as Wanda Goronski. When the film starts, she appears passed out on her sister’s couch. Her sister’s house directly faces a loud, dirty coal plant. She has to get up and walk across the torn up wasteland of coal country to get to the courthouse. She’s late, and her soon to be ex husband and the divorce court judge are impatiently waiting for her. Her husband accuses her of being a bad wife and mother. She basically shrugs and agrees. When her husband demands sole custody of their children, she meekly agrees that they’d be better off with him. Given that this was filmed in 1970, I can imagine that this scene would be shocking.
That business concluded, she tries and fails to get her job back at the sewing factory. She ends up in a bar, where a man sits with her and buys her beer. After a one night stand with him, the man abandons her at an ice cream store. She takes a nap at a movie theater. When she wakes, she discovers that she’s been robbed.
Penniless, she goes to a bar and cadges a beer from a man that she assumes is the bartender. In fact, he’s a thief that has bound the bartender. Desperate not to be alone, she leaves with him. The man (Norman Dennis, played by Michael Higgins) is angry, rude, and abusive to Wanda, but Wanda, accepting that this is her lot in life, passively takes all of it as long as she can stay with him.
Norman is a small time thief. At a department store, he rifles through cars in the parking lot, stealing anything that isn’t nailed down. Perhaps inspired by a visit to his father who doesn’t have much faith in him, Norman plans a big score. It involves an outlandish plan to tie up the bank manager’s family and then place a bomb in their house. Threatened with violence to his family, the bank manager would take Norman to the bank, open the vault, and steal the money. Wanda’s part is to follow behind and serve as the getaway vehicle once Norman has the money.
Unsurprisingly, the plan falls apart. Wanda gets lost and arrives at the bank late. In the meantime, a silent alarm has been triggered at the bank and Norman is killed by the police.
Once again cast adrift, Wanda falls in with another group of people. As people joke and laugh around her, she just quietly stares ahead.
Let’s tick off the elements of neo-realism in the film. Other than Higgins and Loden, all of the actors are amateurs. It was shot on a small budget of $100,000. Numbers vary, but the size of the film crew was between four and seven. Probably due to the small budget, it was filmed in 16 mm. Due to that and other choices Loden made, the film has a grainy, documentary feel to it. Also to save costs, it was filmed on location in the depressed coal country of Pennsylvania. Although there was a screenplay, Loden soon essentially abandoned it, and through the use of improv, watched the film morph and take different directions as the shooting unfolded.
Although this does have a somewhat more conventional plot than other neo-realistic films I’ve seen, the characters are still being buffeted by conditions larger than themselves. Wanda, especially, has very little agency. She is swept up by events and is generally passively accepting of them, never imagining that her life could somehow be happier, more successful, or more fulfilling. Her life, whether it’s being a wife and mother in a small, bleak, dirty coal town or working in a sewing factory full of deafening machines, or tagging along with an abusive, small time thief, seems hopeless.
Throughout the entire film, men treat Wanda with casual sexism. The men call her doll or sweetie, usually to avoid the effort of having to remember her name. They use her for sex and then discard her. For Wanda, sex seems purely transactional. She lets them use her body and in exchange the world allows her to exist for another day.
It’s interesting that, during this time, Loden was married to Elia Kazan. Both a famed Broadway and film director, he’s most famous for A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden. By the time 1970 rolls around, Kazan is embroiled in controversy because of his decision to name names in the McCarthy hearings.
Loden claimed that much of the film was autobiographical, not so much in fact but in the attitude of Wanda. If so, that makes me wonder how much of Kazan was in Norman. Having been a director of such fame and power, I can only imagine that being married to such a man must have been stifling. Kazan apparently even tried to claim credit for the film Wanda. He said that he wrote the script for Loden as a favor to her.
Loden also claimed other inspirations for the film. Besides her own experience, she claimed to be inspired by a woman who thanked a judge after he sentenced her to twenty years for robbery. She also claimed that the film was in response to the bank robbing glamour of the film Bonnie and Clyde.
Whatever the truth is, this film is a great example of the benefits of representation. I can’t conceive of a man being able to make this film. Especially in 1970, this film presents the perspective of a woman never before brought to screen.
dorkenstein 