Wanda (1970)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Wanda (1970) – B. Loden

Intense character study written, starring, and directed by Barbara Loden, her only film.  With no music and shot in that cinema verité documentary style (familiar from the Maysles Brothers) it is easy to think that what you are watching is “real”.  Wanda (Loden) is something of a lost soul (declaring “I’m no good” at one point), wandering (get it?) aimlessly throughout the picture, not seeking out trouble but not avoiding it when it finds her, just trying to get by, it seems.  The film opens in a poor PA mining community with Wanda accepting a divorce from her husband and willingly giving up custody of her two children.  Then we see here move from beer to beer, scrounging money where she can, sleeping with guys who help her out.  She doesn’t say much and perhaps has not much to say.  When she stumbles into a robbery in a bar, she follows the stick-up man to a motel and stays with him even though he is cruel to her.  Perhaps out of loneliness she doesn’t leave when he plans a bank robbery.  When that’s over, she moves on, aimlessly.  An interview I saw with Loden reveals that she felt that Wanda knows “what she doesn’t want” but isn’t sure what she does want.  Most descriptions of the film refer to it as feminist, perhaps because Wanda rejects the expected role for women at the time (mother and housewife) but finds that society offers no other opportunities. 

Midnight (1939)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Midnight (1939) – M. Leisen

I thought I had thoroughly mined the screwball comedy genre (popular in the ‘30s & ‘40s) but I had missed this prime example, directed by Mitchell Leisen but written by Charles Bracket and Billy Wilder (all responsible for other screwballs with other partners).  Claudette Colbert (herself no stranger to the genre) plays a broke chorus girl just arrived in Paris (after losing all her dough in Monte Carlo) who allows a sympathetic taxi driver (Don Ameche) to drive her around from nightclub to nightclub looking for a job.  No luck, but there are sparks between them – nevertheless she flees, winding up in a posh society piano recital (hosted by Hedda Hopper!) where she catches the eye of John Barrymore and ends up playing bridge with his wife (Mary Astor), the man trying to seduce her (Francis Lederer), and another friend.  To avoid being thrown out of the event, she claims to be the Baroness Czerny (taking the taxi driver’s surname off the top of her head).  Soon, she finds herself employed by Barrymore to continue playing the Baroness in order to divert Lederer’s attention away from Astor – but when Ameche (the real Czerny) shows up, chaos ensues.  As it always does in screwball comedy.  Somehow too each film in this genre challenges us to guess who ends up married/not married or divorced/not divorced – and Midnight offers as complex a conclusion as any.  

  

The Mother and the Whore (1973)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Mother and the Whore (1973) – J. Eustache

This film, a sort of epilogue to (or elegy for) the Nouvelle Vague, captures that feeling in your twenties when you are finding your way, establishing relationships under heightened uncertainty, not just about the rules of relationships but about yourself and your values and goals.  In its typically French fashion, the film is all talk – often fascinating talk that reveals character (or character flaws), shot with actors speaking directly to the camera. At the start (of its 3 ½ hour length), the main talker is Alexandre, played by New Wave stalwart Jean-Pierre Léaud who we know so well from his work with Truffaut (from The 400 Blows onward).  Although he is our main point of identification, we are likely meant to be ambivalent about him, since he is clearly setting out to cheat on his live-in girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette LaFont; her flat, not his) with another woman he notices at an outdoor café/pub, Veronika (Françoise Lebrun).  He is a charming talker but selfish and narcissistic, even while he aims to be totally honest with both women (if not always with himself – there is a lot of bad faith on display here). As the film progresses, we get to see more about Marie’s perspective (angry, hurt, jealous) and especially that of Veronika who starts to have monologues of her own by the film’s end -- and she is quite willing to offer her graphic views on sexual matters, laced with a lot of profanity.  Indeed, the film is shocking in this respect, calling to mind the films of Andy Warhol or John Waters that know no boundaries.  Although not pornographic, the film does not shy away from presenting the ménage à trois as it appears, struggles, and collapses, with all the heightened emotions that you would expect. Given its time period (and the title), it isn’t too difficult to ascertain that the film has something to say about “women’s liberation” and is questioning Alexandre’s (and society’s) attitudes toward women and their role.  To its credit, it sees women as free to make their own decisions about life and especially sex; however, I also got the sense that director Jean Eustache (who wrote every word) may yearn for simpler times (or have empathy for those who do) when gender roles were clearer. The end result is nothing less than completely absorbing and intense (if dated) – viewers be prepared!