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Bookmark this pageWanda (1970)
Director: Barbara Loden
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A remarkable one-off from Elia Kazan's wife. Shot in 16mm and blown up to 35, it's a subtly picaresque movie about the wanderings of a semi-destitute American woman. Directing herself, Barbara Loden manages to make the character at once completely convincing in her soggy and directionless amorality, yet gradually sympathetic and even heroic. After a desultory involvement with a bank robber, to whom she becomes attached despite his unpredictable temper, Wanda botches everything - having agreed to drive a getaway car for him - by getting lost in a traffic jam; and our last glimpse of her is back on the road, being picked up in a bar. The film is all the more impressive for its refusal to get embroiled in half-baked political attitudinising; it's good enough to make one regret that the director/star produced nothing else before her untimely death from cancer.Author: DP
Cast & crew
Director: Barbara Loden
Producer: Harry Shuster
Cast: Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins, Charles Dosinan, Frank Jourdano full cast
Duration: 100 mins
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