Interesting prequel, you can see why she decided to become a fish.

Saw this years ago so revisiting this film now that it has been restored was like watching the film for the first time. Restoration is fantastic.

Great building of tension and always engaging. Love the 16mm aesthetic and Barbara Loden says so much with so little words in her textured performance.

So sad that Loden didn't direct another feature.

Thought this movie would be on some female shit, but there’s a lot of stuff for the fellas too

There are so many oeuvre's of canonical filmmakers that could be disposed of completely if it meant at least one more film from this phenomenally gifted filmmaker. I can think of no film which has such a remarkable sense of place and world-building, yet achieves a level of subjective experience that is in my opinion unparalleled in cinema. If this was the one and only movie I had made, I would die happily. Barbara Loden was supernaturally talented. She is truly one of the greatest.

the crushing, mundane, aimless despair of every day reality and our understandable but failed attempts to retreat into fantasy. "if you don't have anything then you're nothing. you may as well be dead. you're not even a citizen of the united states."

Located in eastern Pennsylvania, Wanda concentrates on a portrayal of a woman in a cavity of depression from which she lacks the abilities to emerge. It's a character study of an unambitious woman whose choices are limited and who has fallen so low that she appears only able to feel appreciated by the affections of the opposite sex. Barbara Loden, who writes and directs in addition to starring in the titular role, was the acting student and later spouse of director Elia Kazan, and this is undoubtedly a milestone in American independent cinema as well as surviving as the only one she ever directed as she tragically passed away to cancer at the age of forty-eight. The film possesses excellent use of the miserable cities and towns of the region which, despite being filmed on a small budget, Loden supremely captures.

伊力卡山最大的罪過並非成為好萊塢抓耙子，而是反對他太太 Barbara Loden 繼續執導演筒，使她只成為一片導演，真的是太可惜了。

contemporary feminist film.
Thank you Barbara Loden.

"You did good. You're really something."

A subdued landmark rooted in helplessness, limitations, and the exterior contentment with the lack of ambition that's been shaped over time due to those...until it no longer becomes contentment. Instead, the inevitable crushing feeling of no real accomplishment emerges.

Foundational independent filmmaking, the kind that says everything with so little. Every location has a sense of naturally immersive presence and every uncomfortable moment is so exposed in a way that adds to the gradually rising waves of tension. Barbara Loden only made one feature film in her lifetime, but it is nothing short of a vital masterwork.

Well, I really wish Barbara Loden made more films. Wanda is such a strong effort from a first time director.
Loden’s quite portrayal of the character, Wanda is so strange and sad. Loden acts very subdued and understated throughout Wanda, yet you can’t help but feel drawn into her hypnotic performance.

I feel sufficiently sad.

A gutting portrait of being lost in this ever moving world of ours. There’s a rough, matter-of-fact quality in way the movie/Wanda meanders about that adds charm (heart genuinely broke when the scumbag mr. Dennis complimented Wanda on her criminal capabilities in what must have surely been her first time receiving one) and an aching authenticity to its minimalist aesthetic and existentialism; a movie that is full of unbridled empathy but ultimately has no good answers for its flawed, sympathetic protagonist because the hand you’ve get dealt with—spiritually and fiscally— is hard to change. Absolutely soul-crushing stuff.

Partly about American alienation, partly about toxic masculinity.

Neat that Babs wrote directed and starred in the whole thing.

Uneven pacing. Nothing much seems to happen. Gradual character reveals, if a little obviously. Technically not great. That said, some interesting shots.

A cross between Breathless and Two-Lane Blacktop, but less interesting than either.

Loden’s Wanda is a startlingly earnest, feminist portrait of a woman ground down into passivity and complicity by the world, her depressed, blank gaze communicating a deep malaise and aimlessness which is only occasionally broken by the vestiges of her long since bowed pride, sense of agency, and yearning. The grainy, unpolished texture of the 16mm footage together with Loden's nimble camerawork—expressive use of wide angles, such as the early shot following Wanda's path through a field of coal stacks, complement the jittery intimacy of the handheld camera's verité documentation—works in concert with her own intense, understated performance in conveying psychology and paring back the need for explication, establishing context and backstory through naturalistic dialogue and action to lend the film a quicksilver immediacy.

“You don’t want anything... You don’t have anything, you’re nothing. Might as well be dead.”

Parece un documental.

Lo que me gusta de esta película es el contraste entre lo subversivo del personaje de Wanda huyendo del estereotipo femenino de la mujer a cargo de la familia y a la vez esa sumisión y prisión en la que se encuentra el personaje durante toda su huida.

Y cómo está filmada (e interpretada), jo.