Wanda (1970) on Netflix
Wanda Goronski leaves her husband and children in rural eastern Pennsylvania. Penniless and drifting, she meets Norman Dennis, who is robbing a bar, and he takes her along.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.1/107,147 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
Wanda Goronski, a housewife in rural eastern Pennsylvania, has left her husband and sleeps on her sister's couch. She reaches her divorce hearing late, gives up her children, and loses her job at a sewing factory. A man she spent a night with takes her away, then leaves her at an ice cream shop, and someone steals her money while she sleeps in a movie theater. With almost nothing left, she goes into a bar and holds on to an older man she takes for the bartender. He is Norman Dennis, busy robbing the place, and he cannot shake her off, so she goes on the road with him as Mr. Dennis.
Cast
- Dorothy Shupenesas Wanda's Sister
- Peter Shupenesas Brother In Law
- Jerome Thieras Husband
- Marian Thieras Miss Godek
- Anthony Rotellas Tony
- M.L. Kennedyas Judge
- Gerald Grippoas Court Clerk
- Milton Gittlemanas Factory Owner
- Lila Gittlemanas Factory Owners Wife
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wanda (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Barbara Loden was inspired to write Wanda after reading a newspaper report about a woman who thanked a judge after he sentenced her to 20 years in prison for taking part in a bank robbery.
- When the Hollywood Film and Video laboratory in Los Angeles closed in 2007 and purged its archive, the original 16mm Kodak Ektachrome ECB elements of Wanda were found and bought by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, saving them from a landfill.
- Several of Wanda's performers were non-actors asked arbitrarily to take part, among them the man in the opening coal-field scene and the actor playing Norman's father, whom Barbara Loden and Nicholas Proferes invited after finding him in a Carbondale retirement home.
- Isabelle Huppert championed Wanda's DVD release in France in 2004, John Waters presented it as his annual selection at the 2012 Maryland Film Festival, and Wim Wenders chose it for the Criterion Closet video series.
SPOILER
Loden shot an alternate ending in which Wanda is accosted by police at the roadhouse, but called it "too corny" and instead ended the film with a morose Wanda being entertained by the tavern's patrons.- Wanda was originally to be set in the American South, but the high cost of filming there and the need to be near the film-processing houses in New York City pushed the setting to the coal-mining regions of Pennsylvania.
