Wanda - Barbara Loden

Wanda la vediamo già senza più famiglia, nel sogno americano per alcuni, ma non per lei, senza le luci di New York, sola nel fango, nell'inverno del suo scontento e della sua tristezza, arresa.

non ha lavoro, casa, amici, incontra gente strana, e cattiva, che la tratta come una puttana, nei casi migliori.

poi capita con un ladro triste e manesco, altro che Bonnie e Clyde, e poi sarà di nuovo sola, piccolo pezzetto di legno nella tempesta della vita.

Barbara Loden, regista e Wanda nel film, moglie di Elia Kazan, muore giovane, lascia questo piccolo unico film capolavoro.

lasciate ogni speranza, voi che vedrete Wanda, ma non ve ne pentirete - Ismaele

…Bellezza sofisticata e vistosa, ma fine e tutt’altro che volgare, la Loden attrice si annulla espressivamente come a rendere ancora più atono ed impersonale il tratto che la contraddistingue e che la qualifica come essere umano incapace di prendere in pugno la situazione, certa solo di ciò che non vuole ma completamente insicura ed incerta sul nuovo sentiero di vita da intraprendere.

Un film piccolo, ma fondamentale e bello, triste e struggente fino alla disperazione e ritratto, anzi baluardo timido ma risoluto, di quella parte di società americana che non è riuscita a cavalcare l’onda dell’orgoglio e dell’iniziativa che eleva e rende liberi e indipendenti.

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Written by, directed by and starring Barbara Loden, who died tragically young of breast cancer and was married to Elia Kazan.  The story follows Wanda, a mother who has allegedly abandoned her family and goes wandering between one-night stands until she meets up with a criminal and becomes his accomplice of sorts.  Wanda’s sense of self-worth has been battered down to nothingness.  We’re not sure exactly what set her down this path… on the one hand, she makes some very poor decisions, on the other, she is routinely discounted and dismissed by every male she comes across.  The only thing that seems to drive her is a need to be wanted by someone, no matter how poorly she gets treated in the bargain.  She refers to her companion as “Mr. Dennis” while he barely bothers to learn her name, a name he only uses when coaxing her into a crime.  It’s one of the rare moments Wanda attempts to define herself, and she’s broken down by being granted a small piece of identity…

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…L’air de rien, Wanda avance, prend probablement confiance en elle, rejoint finalement les autres à la fin du récit, après avoir refusé énergiquement qu’un homme abuse d’elle et avoir traversé une crise de larmes purgative qui est l’un des plus beaux moments du film.

À l’image des personnages, le film est sec, rêche. La caméra est cependant vive, dynamique. Distante, oui, mais significativement subjective aussi. Tout semble se dérouler en un présent immédiat, brûlant. Loden évite avec bonheur la représentation psychologisante de ses caractères, les explications narratives artificielles. Au niveau de l’économie du récit, rien ne semble être de l’ordre de la scorie, de l’articulation inutile. On navigue dans l’ordinaire et le quotidien, certes, mais l’auteur va pourtant à l’essentiel.
Et cela fait la pureté et la poésie cinématographique de Wanda – au sens quasi pasolinien du terme.

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…A forgotten product of the American indie movement (before it was even a movement celebrated in festivals like Sundance), Barbara Loden's "Wanda" (1971) is quite a revelation on DVD. Loden, who was married to Elia Kazan at the time and had appeared in his "Splendor in the Grass" a decade earlier, set out to make her directorial mark with this fact-based story of a weak, abused woman forced into a botched bank robbery.

The movie was shot in Pennsylvania in a sort of "fiction verite" style -- location lensing, natural lighting and sound, uninflected acting, a music-free soundtrack and no apparent directorial influence. Loden favors long, static shots, sometimes from great distance, in which a character or a vehicle will move across the frame in real time. Characters speak, not in the standard cinematic rhythms we have come to consider realistic (they're not), but in the far more off-putting bursts and silences of actual conversation.

It's an anti-style that has gained traction in recent years in such films as Bruno Dumont's "Humanite" and Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny." Comparisons to the work of John Cassavetes work up to a point: the indie pioneer certainly went for a naturalistic look and tone, but his dramas are much more intense than here, much more emotionally acted.

Loden bravely subverts her own sexy (if little known) screen image to play poor Wanda, an aging little girl lost who at movie's start is sleeping on her parents' couch, having left (or been thrown out by) her husband. She shows up late in court to relinquish all rights to her children. She is fired from her factory job for being too slow on the line and is cheated out of the few meager overtime dollars due her. Having taken refuge in a movie theater and fallen asleep, she awakes to find her purse fleeced.

A bad day gets worse when she wanders into an empty bar and fails to realize that the "bartender" is actually a robber who has the real publican tied up on the floor out of view. The robber, played in a constant state of riveting paranoia by Michael Higgins, knows he can't let Wanda just walk out. And so begins their road trip through coal country and dingy motel rooms, culminating at a downtown Scranton bank…

da qui

…La qualité intrinsèque de Wanda vient de ce rôle de femme présent dans quasiment toutes les scènes, vivant sa clandestinité au détriment des autres et d’elle-même, à la fois fragile et fort, antipathique et bouleversant à l’image de ses dualités propres, de ses contradictions. Quand elle s’entiche du personnage de Dennis, petit escroc à la semaine, caractériel et violent, qui vole les voitures et braque les banques, il surgit une lumière d’humanité, une étincelle d’espoir, né de cette relation impossible, de ce rêve de couple stable. Comment ne pas y voir la figure tutélaire du cinéaste Elia Kazan qu’au travers de l’œilleton de sa caméra, Barbara Loden juge ou tout du moins interroge : il est aussi un faussaire, un homme d’images. Une interrogation très troublante quand on sait à quel point ils ont pu être proches et en même temps dans quelles conditions ils se sont séparés, fracture qui trouve un point final dans les dernières minutes du métrage, les plus inouïes, les plus fortes, les plus douloureuses. Car si ces derniers instants amènent Wanda à reconsidérer sa vie, c’est qu’il reste après un périple aussi chaotique, une lueur d’espoir pour elle, l’espoir de tout recommencer à nouveau.

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