Barbara Loden Revisited

Barbara Loden, acclaimed director of the feature film, Wanda, has moved forward impressively in her independent career since acting in supporting roles (Splendor in the Grass, Wild River) for her husband, Elia Kazan, then receiving wide theatrical acclaim in the Marilyn Monroe role in Lincoln Center’s production of After the Fall, staged again by Kazan from the Arthur Miller play.

Although she was heralded as a “virtual newcomer” at the time of that 1965 production, it had been almost a decade since Loden first left her rural home in Ashville, North Carolina to stomp through walk-about roles on Broadway and chorus lines at the Copacabana, the position relegated to beautiful women in show business with “bodies approaching perfection” (quote a male reporter from the New York Times). These years were spent, as Ms. Loden once commented, passively accepting roles without ever realizing her own talents, all the while seriously studying acting with Paul Mann (In fact, she still works with Mann, in training to become an acting teacher herself.). The celebration accorded After the Fall gained for Loden deserved confidence which led finally to the challenge of directing.

Currently she is rehearsing an off-Broadway musical with Galt MacDermott and Julie Arenal, scheduled to open at the beginning of 1974.

Her hope for the future is to make a film of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

We of the Madison Women’s Media Collective travelled to Milwaukee to meet with Ms. Loden in conjunction with the showing of her feature film Wanda, now re-examined several years after its original release in light of the attention of the women’s movement. Though a little shy and nervous, Loden answered our questions for hours in the afternoon prior to the screening and continued the interview late into the night. From these conversations, Loden became inextricably linked in this reviewer’s mind with the character of Wanda. As Loden indicated, although she got the idea from a true-life incident of a woman involved in an aborted bank robbery, the character Wanda came, “from myself,” and bears strong resemblance to Loden’s own life experiences.
It is therefore understandable that Ms. Loden seemed keenly sensitive to feminist critics who find fault with the film, although their harshest criticism has been aimed largely toward its pessimistic ending (“We don’t want women like this shown on the screen.”). She said this type of criticism denies the validity of the character of Wanda and therefore denies her own existence.

Ms. Loden is correct in her adamant defence of Wanda’s ending, the most vital and moving part of the picture. It matters little if Wanda complies with bourgeois values of success and accomplishment. What seems more relevant is that Loden as a feminist artist explores the situation of women who are suffocated and destroyed, the true “Silent Americans.”

Wanda is never mythologized nor glamorized and women of her position are too rarely presented on the screen. Wanda is fired from a job in a clothes factory because she works “too slow.” She is tardy to her own court divorce proceedings, appearing finally in the flamboyant garb of hair curlers, capri pants and sneakers. Wanda is enervated, defenseless, passive – stranded in a world of soldier-boy pick ups. She is the straggler, hiking down a road inhabited by male-driven vehicles zipping past her. Wanda is the ultimate victim of a sexist-capitalist society. And Ms. Loden realized that she did not have to physically place Wanda behind bars (as with the real-life model) for the audience to be aware that her heroine is indeed in prison.

Madison Women’s Media Collective: Could you talk about the 1972 New York Women’s Film Festival?

Barbara Loden: I didn’t stay at the New York Women’s Film Festival. I was invited to be on one panel on women in film, but the moderator, who directed the Kate Millett film, was very vicious. A woman got up from the audience to ask a question, and she attacked her for absolutely no reason. She intimidated everyone. Everybody got scared when she yelled at this other woman, so nobody would say anything. After that, I decided to have nothing more to do with the festival. I didn’t go back. I felt there were very bad vibrations, not really a collective, sisterhood type feeling. I didn’t really know how to combat that type of atmosphere, so I withdrew from it.

My film Wanda was shown there, but I wasn’t present.

What do women today think of Wanda?

I know a lot of women are insulted by Wanda because they think it shows women in a bad way. To me it’s valid; it’s like showing myself and a way that I was. People say, “We don’t want to see anybody like that.” Those are the people who wouldn’t want me to exist, and they would say that I was not valid or that I shouldn’t be heard. I did read in Ms. magazine a woman’s review of the New York Women’s Film Festival. She didn’t think that women like Wanda should be shown on the screen. The reviewer said films should be shown about women who are achieving things and setting examples. Naturally we don’t agree. The whole point of why I wanted to make the film was that these women never get a chance; nobody knows about their existence. The woman who wrote this article really doesn’t respect a human being like Wanda who was unfortunate enough to be born into that kind of life. She can’t be bothered with it; it’s too boring.

What was the original idea for Wanda?

I got the idea from a newspaper item some years ago. In the Sunday Daily News they used to have a feature called, “Did Justice Triumph?” They had true stories about murders and criminals, and this was the story of a girl who was an accomplice to a bank robber. Though the robbery didn’t come off and she botched it up, she still was sentenced to twenty years in prison with no appeal. And when the judge sentenced her, she thanked him. It seemed she was very glad to get the sentence. That’s what struck me in reading this account: why would this girl feel glad to be put away?

I always kept this article, although I didn’t really know why. Then the New Wave came from Europe, and I saw Breathless. Afterward I said, “I think this story could make a film like Breathless. It should be made that way.” Then I wrote it into screenplay form, using a criminal and a bank robbery incident. But I made up the girl’s character based on this statement that she made, and also from myself really, ways that I had felt in my life. It was all from my imagination or my feelings. But the plot more or less is from this item in the newspaper.

Have you met the woman?

No, though I wanted to talk to her or have some sort of exchange before I made the movie. It took me a long time to find out what prison she was actually in. I called up the prison, where she still remains, even to this day. I asked the head warden, who was a woman, if I could have any contact with her, but I was told that she wasn’t allowed contact with anyone. The warden wanted to know why I wanted to get in touch.

At the time I said, “I think her story is very interesting, and I would like to write something about it.” And she said, “Well, I don’t think her story is very interesting, and I have to pass approval on everything that comes through here. I won’t allow it.”

It was very mysterious, but they were very emphatic about it. So that was that. I didn’t try anymore after that because I thought it would become too involved; and, after all, Wanda isn’t really about that girl, although I’m sure she has a very interesting story. I was just using the incident she was involved in, you see. 

Did you enjoy being a filmmaker?

Yes, I liked the everyday working. To me it was a very pleasurable experience, I guess because it was my first time. I found I had a fantastic amount of energy. I never slept, and I was very high all the time.

I couldn’t let down because I was responsible to all the people with whom I was working. I was very gung-ho, and I didn’t think of the consequences of releasing the movie. I didn’t allow myself to think, “Well, what if it’s bad.” 

Also, I never really aimed at making a commercial movie. I felt, at best, Wanda would be shown in YMCAs or something like that. I didn’t really set my goals too high, so that way I couldn’t fail too much.

How long did it take to shoot the film?

We had a seven day a week shooting schedule, but we didn’t shoot everyday. Sometimes we didn’t shoot every other day. The time was spent finding locations, securing locations, finding people, dressing places. For example, one of the incidents in the film is a bank robbery. It was very hard for us to find a bank, nobody would let us use theirs. We were halfway through the picture before we found one. It was empty, so we had to go in and dress it up, make it look like a working bank, put in machines and paper money. Of course, afterward, we had to clean it up and leave it just the way we found it, which I think was good practice.
We never used any special lighting. We would just put in stronger bulbs wherever lights already existed. We had to put in quite a few bulbs in the bank, in those big lighting fixtures. We had to spend a lot of time doing things like that.

We had a limited personnel working on Wanda. There was just myself, a cameraman, a sound man, and a fellow who ran errands and would pick up things and deliver things. But I like working this way instead of having other people do these things for me. We had a very leisurely shooting schedule.

Wanda was the first film you directed. Were you influenced by your husband, Elia Kazan’s method of direction?

I’ve worked with him as an actress and seen how he dealt with problems, continually working and not giving up. In that sense I think he influenced me. He’s one of the best directors anyone could have.

But people are very surprised when they see Wanda and realize it is so different from anything he would ever do. Although I think he’s done some really good work, his projects are not the type of things I would be interested in, any more than he would be interested in what I’m doing.

I tried to get him to do Wanda, but he wasn’t interested. He said he didn’t know anything about it, and I should do it myself.

Did you think about making Wanda as a vehicle for raising consciousness among working class women?

I really don’t consciously plan anything. When I made Wanda I didn’t know anything about consciousness raising or women’s liberation. That just started when the film was finished. The picture was not about women’s liberation. It was really about the oppression of women or people. I don’t even think it would help the people it’s made about to see it. In fact, the people who were in the movie from the anthracite region were rather disappointed that it was not a glamorous picture. It was not as exciting as they thought it might be.

Do you feel it is incumbent upon a film director to begin to suggest alternatives?

I really don’t have any ready answer for this question. This is something I’ve been trying to figure out myself for a long time. It should be enough for artists to present something as they see it. If you examine works of art that have meant something to you, say in literature or even film, they didn’t necessarily offer a solution. They were so human, and moved you and touched you. Yet there was not necessarily a solution offered to some kind of human dilemma or struggle.

I’ve seen films that have had effects, but I don’t know if they are necessarily good. Battle of Algiers, I know, has told a lot of people how to have revolution or how to go about guerilla warfare. But I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing. People can learn to be criminals from watching television.

I know that you can see things that will inspire you and make you feel like a good person, tell you that there’s a lot of good in you and that you’re right and that you should try to be the better part of yourself. But I don’t know about bringing about any social change. I think they can but not in any immediate way. I think it’s a very subliminal, slow process. I don’t think the influence of a particular film could be predicted. Yet I do think films have an influence in the sense they are like myths. They are like telling stories. 

Do you think there is a particular point of view which could only come from a female director?

I was at a seminar at a festival of women in the arts, where one of the discussions was, “What is the Feminist Sensibility?” And the conclusion was that nobody knew.

We don’t know what we feel or think at this point. Ways that we always thought we felt we’re beginning to understand aren’t really us. We were told, in very subtle ways, of course, to think that way or feel that way, or, “Oh, you’re a little girl and little girls don’t do this and little girls don’t do that.” Being a woman is unexplored territory, and we’re pioneers of a sort, discovering what it means to be a woman.

What role do you see for film in helping to discover this consciousness?

If a film is made and says, “This is about women and how they feel,” I don’t think anybody will go to it, including women. Everybody’s getting very put off by anything that smacks of women’s liberation because they’ve just been inundated by all the media. Every time I hear anything about women’s liberation I just say, “Oh, God, I don’t want to hear about that anymore.” But the truth is, I really do. But it’s become a really glib topic, and it puts people off. 

That’s happening at universities too. How do you present the women’s issue without suffocating people?

I was at a university recently where they were starting a course in women’s studies. The teachers didn’t know how they would teach it or what they should teach. They said, “Our students are not interested. We give them things to read, and they won’t read them. We don’t even ask them to find the reading material; we print it out and hand it to them. They still won’t read it. The students only want to watch TV.” I said, “Why don’t you start with TV? Have the assignment that everybody watch TV one evening, wherever they happen to be. They’re going to be watching anyhow. And the next day discuss it by questioning what they saw... Who were the women and what were they doing there with the men? What roles did they take? And what did they think about?” This is a way that people can be made aware of how they are seeing things.

What type of films do you like?

I like Satajiat Ray’s films. My favorite film is Bunuel’s Los olvidados. That film and also others like Ray’s Two Sisters and Pather Panchali I could see over and over.

I like slow paced films. You’ll notice Wanda is a very slow-paced picture. It was played more or less as an art film, not a commercial film. It’s not a film everyone is going to like.

Have you seen the works of Mizoguchi?

Recently the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed some films by Mizoguchi. His films are very beautiful, although they are not easily accessible in this country. He was primarily concerned with the plight of women in Japan. He dealt with them as either geisha girls, a high form of prostitution, or they were very low-ranking prostitutes. Most of his works were about that life.

Antonioni’s films deal with women who are very conscious of their problems and very much oppressed. Do you like his works?

I think Antonioni’s films are very beautiful, and I love to watch them, but I can never understand the women in them. I never feel any sort of kinship with them, although I’m not saying that there aren’t women like that.
I’m not really a student of films; I’ve never really studied them.

As an actress did you ever reject a part because of the production’s portrayal of a woman?

A lot of actresses, including myself, even before we heard anything about women’s liberation, just couldn’t bring ourselves to do certain parts. We just said, “They’re silly parts,” or “Those parts are no good,” which meant they weren’t human or real. They had nothing to do with being a woman, but we didn’t know it then. We didn’t put our objections in terms of, “See how women are presented.” It was not that type of thing. We just instinctively rejected them as being bad.

Would problems have been avoided in working for a woman director?

Years ago, there were only male directors, even now I don’t know of any female directors in the theatre. I do know some, but they’re working more in experimental type theatre, you know, guerilla theatre and types like that. Back then I never questioned working with men; that was the way it was done.

How did you respond to portraying Marilyn Monroe in After the Fall?

I never knew anything about Marilyn Monroe, and I still really don’t except what I read in Life magazine once in a while. She hadn’t been dead very long before that so it would have been silly to try to imitate her, so I just worked on the role from myself. Maybe if someone’s been dead for a long time, fifty years or something, then you would research to find out about them, what kind of life they had. But Monroe’s death was too close; it would have been really intimidating. Instead of helping me, it would have inhibited me. Someone just died two months ago, and then you’re going to play them, that would really be silly.

But when I read that script, I thought it was about me. When I read the part, I said, “Oh, how did he know? How did he know about me?” It’s interesting because the way Maggie is in the beginning of After the Fall is very much like Wanda in this film, sort of drifting around and not knowing what she’s doing, and then she becomes attached to a man.

Do you feel that you changed very much for having gone through Wanda’s character? And would you at all change the rather pessimistic ending of the film if you were making it now?

By the time I finally made the movie, I had changed very much. Still, I was making it about a former state that I had been in which I knew very well.

Yes, it’s true that Wanda is a very pessimistic film, and it could only be made that way. Now I would not make the same picture. But I’m not saying that even that would not be pessimistic. I really don’t know what might come out.