Films › Screenwriting
Wanda
Directed by Barbara Loden, 1970
Barbara Loden writes, directs, and stars in Wanda with a screenplay that refuses the usual redemptive arc for a woman who drifts out of her marriage and into a petty criminal's orbit with no plan and little resistance. The script is built almost entirely on passivity as character action, Wanda rarely initiates, rarely objects, and Loden treats that lack of agency as the honest subject rather than a flaw to dramatize around. Dialogue is sparse and unresolved, scenes often end without the confrontation a conventional script would demand, because Loden is writing toward drift rather than momentum. Shot on 16mm with a small crew and largely nonprofessional locations standing in for real diners, motels, and courtrooms, the screenplay was written to match a low-budget, observational shooting style rather than the reverse, meaning scene length and dialogue density were calibrated to what could be captured in available light with minimal setups. For a screenwriter, the lesson is structural nerve: building a feature around a protagonist who does not want anything conventionally, trusting that behavioral specificity, not incident, can sustain a story to its unresolved final shot.
What to watch for
Watch how many scenes end without any confrontation or decision, leaving Wanda simply moving on to the next situation.
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