Barbara Loden, the wife of film director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and stars in this portrait of a born loser in blue-collar Pennsylvania. Wanda is the perfect bad example: she's poorly educated, unemployed, a doormat for any available man...and when she walks into a bar one night to use the bathroom, she has no idea the lone man inside is actually robbing the place. Loden, who looks like a bedraggled version of Joanne Woodward in some of her hick roles, also helped to raise the funds for this picture, which played film festivals and garnered good critical buzz yet wasn't widely distributed. The uneven sound is fuzzy, the camera-work is all over the place, and the lenient editing allows scenes to ramble on far longer than necessary (also the baby screaming during the film's opening five minutes was a big mistake). However, despite these serious faults, the movie has a realistically squalid, hopeless ambiance that is, at times, touching, pathetic, ingenuous and very natural. A bumpy ride, but worthwhile for fans of character studies. **1/2 from ****
