Most people have probably never heard of Barbara Loden and this is certainly the only film of note she ever made. Still, it’s an important enough film to be included in the US National Film Registry and most people will have heard of her husband, Elia Kazan. Mostly I am impressed that Loden would write, direct and then cast herself in the lead role of an extremely stupid character. She states that this is partly autobiographical and that too feels profoundly honest. Many films have tried to deglamorize classic Hollywood tropes but this succeeds more than most simply because the characters are such unsympathetic losers that there’s nothing cool about them at all.

A woman who lives in the rural, coal-producing region of Pennsylvania, Wanda Goronski, has been sleeping on the couch in her sister’s house. After bumming some spare cash from a local, she arrives late at court where her husband is asking for a divorce. When asked by the judge, she declines to contest the divorce and says that the children would be better off with him. Afterwards she goes to a clothing factory where the supervisor explains to her that she has no wages remaining after tax deductions and refuses to take her back as she is a slow worker. Ending up in a bar, a stranger pays for drink, has sex with her and quickly abandons her. After being robbed of all of her money while sleeping in a cinema, she goes to a bar to use the restroom, not realizing that the man at the counter has knocked the bartender out and is the process of robbing the place. The man tries to get rid of her while watching out for the police but she insistently clings to him in her own confused, ditzy way. The man eventually takes her along him as his accomplice as he embarks on a more audacious robbery and she follows obediently even after she realizes that he is a criminal.

That the character of Wanda is as dumb as a rock is an understatement. She has difficulty understanding and remembering simple instructions, gets lost easily, and has to haltingly read a newspaper article one word at a time. For all that, she does have some dim awareness of right and wrong, giving up her children so that they can be better off and proves to be very reluctant to become an active accomplice in the man’s crimes. Feminists viciously condemned this film for creating such as awful female character. The man isn’t much better, being cruel and controlling, yet his plans has no chance of working and he proves to be frail and weak when it comes to a fight. It’s like a perverse version of Bonnie and Clyde, stripped of all glamor and any ounce of coolness. This pathetic duo don’t get to go down in a blaze of immortalizing glory. They’re just damp squibs passersby sadly shake their heads at and are quickly forgotten. No impressionable youth would watch this film and think of them as being cultural heroes to emulate.

My wife thinks that the character is unrealistic, not comprehending how a mind like Wanda’s would work. I’d argue that the unrealistic part is that someone should have exploited the hell out of a woman this dumb long ago. It would only be because she lives in a rural backwater that that she hasn’t already been manipulated into doing sex work by some shrewd pimp. Loden claims that she was inspired by a period of similar aimlessness in her youth when she simply wandered through life from person to person and place to place not knowing what to make of her life. The way Wanda desperately clings to whichever man can give her direction and basic sustenance is pathetic and not endearing in the least. Loden does understand that the natural trajectory of such a passive and submissive character would be to end up as a prostitute as she cites the experiences of such sex workers as part of her research so we can infer that this will be Wanda’s eventual fate unless something changes for her.

This is a small film made with a limited budget with no grand ambitions. Yet there is no doubt that this is the work of an auteur with a unique vision of her own and there is something humbling in showing even a small part of herself in such demeaning terms. That it engendered such vitriol from the feminists of the era is proof of its impact. It’s a shame Loden never made another film of note after this.