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In a 1972 episode of The Mike Douglas bridal veils Show , co-hosted by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Barbara Loden is introduced by her hosts as “a very lovely bridal veils lady,” as “married to a very famous gentleman,” as “wife of Elia Kazan,” as “a mother,” and as a “filmmaker in her own right.” Seconds later, polka-dotted set doors slide open and Loden appears.
She is wearing white jeans, bridal veils a black knit shirt, and lace-up boots. Her bangs flop over her forehead and her blond highlights have grown out color-blocking her long, thin and wispy hair. Loden looks like a dream. She has the smile of a young Cloris Leachman, she begins her sentences with “Gee” and speaks of being “bashful.” She is from another time. Like a woman in a Sunkist beauty bridal veils ad the kind from Teen magazine: bridal veils “Leaves your hair looking squeaky-clean, smelling lemon-fresh.” It s as if at any moment she might turn, stare straight into the camera, and sell you a bar of Dial soap.
Loden s voice is soft and her words are considered. It is nerve-wracking to listen to her, a cause for concern. She is wary when discussing her marriage to Elia Kazan, especially bridal veils in comparison to that of John and Yoko: “We lead a rather insulated life. We don t get around much.” Loden barely reacts when it s made clear that Douglas hasn’t even watched bridal veils her film, Wanda , but is posing questions nonetheless.
However, once she starts bridal veils talking about her movie the only one she would ever write and direct poise outdoes caution. Loden speaks faster and with finality. Her thoughts accrue in increments. She uses her hands. Her focus turns urgent. It s clear she feels a deep kinship with her character, Wanda Goransky, a woman Loden says is living “an ugly type of existence,” a wife and mother who has abandoned her marriage, her children, and herself. She is uncertain of what she wants but persuaded by what she doesn t want. Loden is her advocate. Wanda is Loden s orbit.
“She s trying to do the best thing that she can. Life is a mystery to her,” she says, though not to Douglas, bridal veils not to John or to Yoko, but to some perhaps doubtful though vital, and resolving side of her nature.
Premiering at Venice in 1970, Wanda , was released a year later in New York and L.A. Largely ignored and omitted in the United States, like so many endangered American independent films, Wanda was revered in Europe. Marguerite Duras, who writes in The Lover , “My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women,” as well as Isabelle Huppert, who released a DVD of Wanda in France in 2004, were fans.
The film begins with a shot of a Pennsylvania coal mine. The landscape is lunar and the machinery looks miniature: crater-sized puddles bridal veils and Tonka-sized trunks. Mountains of coal denote bridal veils work, hard work, repetition, and men. We immediately know that Wanda, the title character, whoever she is, is likely detached bridal veils from this world, these men, this work especially if the work is hard and repetitive. A Woman Under the Influence, which also starts at a work sit e , is called to mind. Five Easy Pieces , too. Mabel Longhetti, Rayette Dipesto, and Wanda Goransky: all women whose lives, in various bridal veils ways, have been trivialized. As Loden puts it, they simply “drop bridal veils out.”
But bridal veils it s the echoing sound of machinery at the start of these films that creates a discrete type of stillness: moving parts that carry out tasks, strictly physical, toiling tasks tools, methods, with functions that function. When Wanda appears bridal veils moments bridal veils later, waking up on a couch a single white sheet as her blanket she is hungover and bothered by a wailing baby. Wanda is neither functioning nor ready to carry out tasks. If this family and town are hers, they are hers to escape.
Before the movie really takes off, a series of events where Wanda is alone or Wanda is with someone who makes her feel even more alone, unfold. A portrait is painted of a woman who is trying to get as far away from herself as she can and who hasn t yet found her “use.” She walks far distances a tiny white blemish crossing mountains of gunmetal gray coal to beg for money, to catch an empty bus, to show up late for divorce court, to look at the judge, point to her husband and say, “They d be betta off with him.”
Too slow as a seamstress, bridal veils she loses her job at a factory. Too broke to buy a drink, she wakes up hungover in motel beds with men who hurry out in the mornings, who reluctantly drop her off anywhere. In one scene she stands on the side of the highway, licking ice cream as a ma
