- 1975: The Frontier Experience (Kurzfilm, auch Schauspielerin und Produzentin)
- 1975: The Boy Who Liked Deer (Kurzfilm, auch Produzentin)
Verärgert waren diesmal Miriam vor Ort und Rene daheim – Rene so sehr, dass er abbrach und lieber schlafen ging, wie er uns über Telegram wissen ließ. Alle anderen fanden den Film sehr interessant bis super.
Lustig, dass Andreas später vermeldete, dass Miriam den Film bereits 2003 im VC gezeigt hatte (wenn Du das genaue Datum sagen kannst, Andreas, mach ich daraus noch einen Blogeintrag.). Anwesend seien damals außerdem noch Sven, Stefan, Stephan, Heidrun und er selbst gewesen. In seiner Erinnerung ein absoluter Spitzenfilm, den er in seiner Jahreswertung auf Platz 3 geführt hat.
Recht so! Findet auch die BBC-female-directors-Liste und führt „Wanda“ auf Platz 16 https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191125-the-100-greatest-films-directed-by-women-poll
Film über eine Loserin. Lethargisches Nix-auf-die-Reihe-Kriegen. Low-Budget-Ästhetik. Zu Beginn Babygeschrei. Lockenwickler. Totale mit der winzigen Wanda, die gefühlt zwei Stunden lang durch Kohlehalden läuft. Scheidung in Gerichtsszene – klar: es kommen jetzt richtige Charaktere und eine richtige Geschichte. Dann Baloney & Clyde. Bekloppter Haarschmuck und bekloppte Katakomben. Holy Land USA. Einkaufszentrum. Traurig natürlich, manchmal quälend langsam, hyperrealistisch und deshalb gleichzeitig fesselnd.
Assoziationen: Terrence Malicks „Badlands“, Jarmusch („Permanent Vacation“, „Stranger Than Paradise“), Cassavetes („A Woman under the Influence“), Arnold („American Honey“); Antithese zu Penns „Bonnie and Clyde“ und Godards „Breathless“.
In a retrospective review, Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote: ”To say that Wanda deglamorizes the American crime film is both entirely accurate and something of an understatement.“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_(film))
Fazit: „War ein superlustiger Abend, auch wenn der Film ‚a gscheiter Schmarrn‘ war.“ (MV)
Mehr zum Eigenstudium (danke Gunnar!):
- Wanda Now: Reflections on Barbara Loden’s Feminist Masterpiece (https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5811-wanda-now-reflections-on-barbara-loden-s-feminist-masterpiece)
- Barbara Loden: “A Woman Telling Her Own Story Through That of Another Woman” (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/barbara-loden-a-woman-telling-her-own-story-through-that-of-another-woman)
- Bringing Wanda Back (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/bringing-wanda-back)
- Rekonstruktionsgeschichte (http://www.film-foundation.org/defogging-wanda)
5 Kommentare:
I first saw Barbara Loden’s film many years ago, though it was long after its original release; despite support from Marguerite Duras, it had become more or less invisible, and was almost completely forgotten. But when I saw it, I was so full of admiration for it that we ended up restoring the film and releasing it first theatrically and eventually on DVD; indeed, we’ve just released it again, since the negative has now been restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation.
It is such an extraordinary movie. Loden, who wrote, directed and took the lead role in it, was an actress, and the wife of Elia Kazan. The film – which is quite unusual in various ways and which centres on a woman who has left her husband and ends up going around with a guy who’s basically a crook – was based on a true story Loden had read about, and she developed a whole fiction around that.
What’s so interesting is that this very realistic, very simple story is told in such a way that you can also read it as something more metaphorical – to do, perhaps, with Loden’s own relationship both to the cinema and to a man, Kazan, whom she may have felt was stealing from her. And because it can be read in that way, the film becomes more conceptual and more universal in its relevance.
It’s important if you make a film which is metaphorical or conceptual that it should also be credible as a story. Ordinarily it takes a lot of experience to be able to carry that off properly; what’s amazing about Wanda is that Loden managed to do it in her very first film.
Sadly, because she died so young a few years later, she never got to make another film. (She was meant to appear in Kazan’s 1969 film The Arrangement, but the studio didn’t want her and she was replaced by Faye Dunaway.) And that’s one reason why the film is so moving: it reflects Loden’s own very sad destiny. It feels like a scream of someone just about surviving…
Of course, Wanda was made at a time when certain people were fighting against the constraints and contrivances of the old studio system; they were looking for new ways of filming, and Wanda shows a kind of freedom in the way it was made. The very opening scene where you see Wanda with curlers in her hair – I can’t think of another American film that starts that way. It’s weird, almost as if she was naked, but it’s also funny, and faintly disturbing at the same time. Or there are those shots of huge black mountains of coal, which are also part of the film’s aesthetic; they say so much about industry and poverty and work. Things like that set the tone for the whole film.
And of course Wanda is not some romanticised positive role model, but a real person. As a character I find her very moving. I feel as if I identify with Wanda, in that she’s both fragile and strong at the same time; she may be alone, but deep down there is a real resistance in her. I find that very touching. I can’t imagine such a film ever having been made by a man. But Loden did make it, and she did everything.
— Isabelle Huppert, speaking to Geoff Andrew
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/female-gaze-100-overlooked-films-directed-by-women
noch eine super BFI-Liste zum Abarbeiten! -:)
Jö
Guck mal, Silke, jetzt sind noch nicht mal zwei Jahre vergangen, und schon komme ich Deiner Bitte nach! Also, die Erstaufführung von "Wanda" im VC fand am 4. September 2003 statt. Alle weiteren Infos hast Du ja schon korrekt im Post aufgeführt.
Besser als jede Kritik, was Isabelle Huppert da erzählt. Toll.
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