Wanda

A remarkable one-off from Elia Kazan’s wife. Shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm, it’s a subtly picaresque movie about the wanderings of a semi-destitute but aimless American woman. Directing herself, Barbara Loden manages to make the character convincing in her directionless amorality, yet gradually sympathetic and even heroic. Essentially a road-movie with an existentialist backbone, the film depicts Wanda drifting into desultory relations with a bank robber, to whom she becomes attached despite his unpredictable temper. But Wanda botches everything and fails to deliver the getaway car after getting lost in a traffic jam. The story continues with our last glimpse of her back on the road, being picked up in a bar. Similar in feel to other contemporary films, “Two-Lane Black Top” and “Killing of A Chinese Bookie”, “Wanda” refuses to provide explanation or judgement of its characters and delivers a picture of both intimacy and tragedy. A neglected masterpiece of American independent film-making. Regrettably the director/star produced nothing else before her untimely death from cancer.