In 1971 Loden became an unexpected art house darling and distinguishing herself as the first woman director of a theatrically released feature since Ida Lupino. The winner of the Critics Prize in Venice in 1970 was however, ‘a critical hit but failed to create excitement at the box-office’. Her film was released in only one theatre in New York and never shown in the rest of the country. While Chantal Akerman, Sally Potter and Yvonne Rainer became household names in feminist film theory, Loden has been ignored by every major text in the genre. Shot in a Cassavetes-like cinema-vérité style on grainy 16mm film stock, Wanda tells the story of the unlikely partnership between a coal-miner’s wife from Pennsylvania (played by the filmmaker herself) dumped by her husband, and a petty crook on the rebound who convinces her to pull a ‘bank job’ with him. There was no storyboard, no rehearsals, and a high shooting ratio used to film this unhappy anti-Bonnie and Clyde road movie. Loden’s decision to shoot in reversal 16mm was motivated by the need to keep the costs down; it allowed her to explore new ways of combining fiction and documentary. Through its chronic joylessness, Loden suggests what it means to be a damaged, alienated woman. ‘Where do you go after you reject the only life society permits? And once a woman gains her freedom, what can she do with it? The answer: nowhere and nothing.’
