WANDA

American audiences weren’t ready for Barbara Loden’s Wanda when it premiered in 1970. A stark portrait of a working-class woman (played with raw conviction by Loden herself) who breaks free of a miserable marriage, only to find herself on the lam with an abusive bank robber, the film was a far cry from the Hollywood and Broadway productions that had kicked off Loden’s acting career in the 1960s. “I really hate slick pictures,” the writer-director-star declared in an interview about the movie, and such staunch anti-commercialism shines through in its dingy locations, unpredictable rhythms, and combustible emotions.

Few films that start out so neglected can hope to be as fiercely beloved nearly half a century later. In recent years, Wanda has emerged as a major inspiration for a new generation of artists,[…] Even as it’s continued to be largely unavailable, Loden’s one and only feature-length directorial achievement is now widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of independent cinema, and also as a cornerstone of women’s filmmaking.

“Wanda was a revelation […] nothing had prepared me for her performance—or for the film itself. Here was an American movie that picked up where Italian neorealism had left off, applying its moral principles and aesthetics to rural American backwaters, with an absence of the sentimentality that had derailed so many postwar European films. Here was an American depiction of outlaws that refused to glamorize (think of Wanda as Loden’s retort to Bonnie and Clyde and to Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie as a fashion icon). And most importantly, here was a feminist film that made visible a woman who had internalized society’s contempt for her so deeply that it was impossible for her to speak or act for herself.” (Amy Taubin)

Tickets 100-120 kr online or at the door.

Cineville cards are accepted at this screening.

Film i Malmö memberships are not valid for this screening.