Movie #61: Released in 1970, directed by Barbara Loden, 103 minutes. New to me!

Interesting context to this one. This is an interest couple of years in the Sight and Sound List. We’re whipsawing from giant studio movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Godfather (coming next), to European arthouse like Persona, Au Hasard Balthazar, and Playtime, to outsider indie flicks like Daisies, Black Girl, and this. (Sidenote: is Andrei Rublev in the Venn Diagram of all these categories?) Meanwhile, Barbara Loden seems pretty amazing – she wrote, directed, and starred in this movie, which is now regarded as one of the greatest of all time, never directed another feature film (but was active in theater), and died at age 48 of breast cancer.

I thought the movie itself was interesting, if not gripping. What I liked most was the way that Wanda and Mr. Dennis are sort of mirrors of each other. Both either don’t want to (or can’t) fit into conventional society, and live lonely isolated lives as a result. They can’t really even bond with each other over that. But where Wanda is passive, Dennis is active and aggressive. (No judgment, he’s also the one who ends up dead). Dennis tries to bring Wanda into his passive life, but it’s a tough fit. She wants to bail on the heist, and she ultimately misses it (though she does have one active role in salvaging the heist when it starts to go wrong).

The movie also ends with a 400-blows-esque freeze frame signifying uncertainty about where we go from here. What will happen to Wanda?

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?

It is committed to a sympathetic portrait of a kind of person who is very real, but isn’t always well represented in art. At the time, it was singular in it’s conception and execution.

Next: The Godfather