Wanda | Marco Joachim

thanks everyone for coming tonight I'm Ross Litman I am a co-curator of this series along with Paul Malcolm and we're very glad to have you a a few housekeeping things if you could uh silence uh your cell phones and turn off the any light emitting devices and um also uh settle in it's a we have a long program tonight we have a lot of exciting things that are part of it including uh I'm going to beginning with a a more a longer presentation that we normally do about a little over 10 minutes but it's uh a lot of interesting material to present on Barbara Loden and then following uh the uh screening of Wanda we're going to have Marco Joakim her son in person to discuss growing up with her and with Elia Kazam uh I do also want to mention and then we'll of course conclude with the visitors uh tomorrow we also just learned today we're gonna have a special guest Robert young at age 95 the cinematographer and co-writer and producer of nothing but a man will be joining us tomorrow for that screening after Shirley Clark's um the cool world and you know of course the cool world I think most of you will know is an extraordinary film but some of you might not know nothing but a man this is a truly extraordinary work and if you're unfamiliar with who Robert Young is he also is the director of alam brista and The Ballad of Cortez so this is a really exciting chance to see him at age 95 um so I really would encourage you to come come out for that screening uh about Wanda I should mention that I was uh very fortunate back when I was uh working as a restorationist at UCLA I was fortunate to personally find and I guess in a sense save the original camera roles of Wanda one day before they were earmarked from destruction in a lab uh closure uh so they weren't even marked with her name it was just Harry Schuster but I just saw the title wand who's Harry Schuster well you'll learn in my talk in a minute um but I thought maybe this is Wanda let's hope and it turned out so without that little bit of good luck uh we might not even be here today um so um I'd like to thank Paul and UCLA uh for uh just helping put this whole series together the film foundation and Gucci for their funding of not just the restoration have Wanda but so many excellent films over the years Marco joaki Marco would you raise your hand please who will be joining us in conversation after the screening and then I I'd like to thank cinch n picture and sound and audio Mechanics for the wonderful restoration work and the academy for the loaning of the print of of the visitors so I'm now going to give a little bit of a talk uh Jim if you could uh open the curtains please this is a a short excerpt of a much longer talk that I used to give on Wanda back when we did the restoration a number of years ago Barbara Loden at surface glance might be the least do we have the podium light on me yes we do sorry the Loden at surface glance might be the least likely candidate to have produced one of the masterpieces of American Cinema according to Legend she was conceived in a field of daisies born in Maran Ohio in 1932 she had to face not only class but also gender discrimination throughout her life today it's even harder to appreciate the struggles she had to confront not just in her professional encounters but within herself for by her own admission she had grown up in an environment where in a woman's only chances of self-improvement were through attachment to a man it's precisely from these struggles that Wanda grew she began her career as a dancer at the Copa Cabana and with the help of her first husband Larry Joakim began appearing on the Ernie Kovac show she soon thereafter met noted director Elia Kazan whom she was later to marry Kazan cast her in a small role in his excellent Wild River in 1960 and more famously Splendor in the grass seen here with a young Warren batty however it wasn't until she appeared in kazan's Stage production of Arthur Miller after the fall that she came to True public attention for her spectacular portrayal of the character modeled after Marilyn Monroe her celebrity was short-lived however for it was soon after this that Kazan and her withdrew into a life of relative seclusion partially kazan's urging she turned down the role of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde and her un understudy and after the fall Fay Dunaway took the role opposite batty of such details history is made we can be grateful in one respect if her acting career taken off who knows whether we'd ever have seen Wanda Loden was Furious when Kazan Later cast Dunaway in a role largely based on her in in his film The Arrangement and she revealed that her own misgivings about Bonnie and Clyde lay elsewhere she stated that the movie was unrealistic and glamorized the characters people like that would never get into situations or lead that kind of Life they were too beautiful Wanda is the anti Bonnie and Clyde I was later to learn from documentarian da pennebaker that the film had been funded by friend Harry Schuster as a tax write off and intended to lose money however while it was indeed a huge financial flop its critical success particularly in Europe led to just enough income that it even failed as a write-off it had an effect failed at losing the connection to pennebaker is no accident Laden needed a creative partner in the project and ultimately chose Nick peris who was to both shoot and edit the film peris had begun his career as an editor for pennebaker and crucially emerged from the documentary tradition of Cinema ver by both intent and default Wanda is one of the most authentic depictions of small town America committed to screen with its location shooting existing light cinematography long takes and extensive use of non-actors it functions at one level as pure documentary yet with the exquisitly honed performances of the two two professional leads Loden and Michael Higgins and perhaps a trace of its kazanian pedigree it also functions as a high level if intentionally laconic drama in hindsight it serves as a key work of a largely unnoticed Wellspring of American neorealism which we're delighted to be exploring in the current series as the focus is neorealism I don't want to say too much about the restoration but that said uh many of the films that we're showing are care y restored prints by UCLA or sister organizations and some of the workflow is of relevance so I'll just now give a very brief extp of the longer lecture that I used to present on Wanda's restoration and for those of you interested in more detail I recommend going to the Criterion website where I have an essay on it a crucial component of Wanda was its being shot on 16mm ecta Chrome efb stock which has a unique color palette completely unlike Eastman color negative Eastman commercial film or Koda Chrome and in a stroke of luck 98% of Wanda was unfaded a key part of our work would be restoring the unique colors of the original or would it to quote an early review by Gordon GA from the time of its initial release for the first couple of minutes I thought it was all a ghastly mistake this terrible muz color but it soon became obvious that Barbara Loden meant it to look Messy as if real life had been recorded per chance by an amateur photographer with cheap film and poor laboratory facilities gaus is a nice interpretation in fact it's common in restoring Independent films to encounter a movie whose primary characteristics were deeply rooted in low production values which actually need to be retained in the restoration and if you look at the uh top uh right and then the bottom you'll see two images of what the film used to look like those are from the movie um this is from a press package and show it what he was referring to however in an interview in the film Journal of Summer 1971 Barbara Loden was asked the following question the color in the film often has a washed out effect and the lighting is sometimes very dim were these effects intentional Loden unless you have your own laboratory it's difficult to control the quality of the color in our original print the color looked extremely good but later prints made by different Labs were not such good quality GA thought the poor quality of the original prints was intentional loden's comments belly this now with access to the film's original camera roles we have a better sense of how it appeared in actuality the film was not only not ugly it was in fact quite beautiful if anything the amateur 16mm ectom pallette capturing the decidedly unglamorous lives of its characters in Rich detail extensive color experimentation was conducted at cinematech Labor cinch Laboratory iies to find the best way to render this unique reversal color palette which could not be accurately conveyed with Standard Printing methodologies either then or now uh another word on the print tonight uh you will see some dirt on the screen some traces to the original uh elements and some of it just due to simple wear and tear from the prince's uh successful touring over the years but I we test uh screen to roll earlier and the color is really just stunning so you'll you'll see what we're talking about uh also last technical note uh there's some historical ambiguity as to Wanda's correct aspect ratio as is discussed on my essay on the Criterion website and tonight we'll be presenting it in 166 for you technical people out there Wanda was initially based on a newspaper clipping Barbara Loden had seen about a workingclass Polish woman involved in a failed bank robbery who upon hearing of her sentence to 20 years in prison thanked the judge the desperation of that story resonated with Loden and it eventually grew into a screenplay called the gray world before Loden settled on its final name it took six years to raise the money needed to complete the film according to Loden Kazan was supportive and without him she may never have made it but the vision was clearly hers scholar barones Reno correctly notes a patronizing tone in kazan's comment that I didn't really believe she had the equipment to be an independent filmmaker but she and Nick were a good combination and they were throughout Khan's autobiography one finds him commenting on loden's limitations while simultaneously marveling at her results and the depth in her work as both an actress and director some even speculate a jealousy at the Acclaim Wanda was to receive and it clearly helped as a model and inspiration for his own low-budget film The Visitor made it after Wanda which will screen later tonight it's important to note the trajectory of careers uh of kazan's career at that point the arrangement previously mentioned was based on kazan's bestselling novel which was itself based on Loden unlike the book the film with Fay dunway was a flop and Kazan couldn't get funding after that and was kind of on the outskirts of the industry seeing loden's success with Wanda helped Kazan realize the Great possibility of low-budget Cinema and he went ahead and shot the visitors in 16 mm in their own home um with his son Chris writing the script and peris again as the cinematographer while the film is ostensibly less neorealist neorealist um it's a startling Counterpoint to Wanda and definitely Bears relevance on the conversation and there's some important things to know about it um it's in its unique way completely devastating and uh if perhap per s flawed in some ways but we'll we'll talk about that with Marco in conversation after Wanda Wanda premiered at the Venice film festival in 1970 where it won a foresy prize although Loden was to subsequently produce two short films and starred in the first New York production of come back to the five and dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean she never again worked on a scale as large as Wanda today it's considered a classic listed as one of the 100 greatest American American films of all time by noted critic Jonathan rosenbom and many others Len was to die tragically of cancer at the tender age of 48 in 1980 Wanda remains her lasting Legacy thank [Applause] you please give a warm welcome to Marco Joakim how you doing so uh Marco you know this film is always so devastating to to watch um uh but I guess I just like to begin by asking you to tell us your memories of the film's production yes so uh and I was a kid during the the uh oh can you hear me now uh I was a kid when they were making it but I remember being on set being being with them on set at the time and uh it was uh it was very exciting uh that was very exciting thing to be around I remember uh Michael Higgins uh putting makeup up putting a scar on his head making a scar every morning putting this and I remember a lot of stuff about the picture the dynamite I remember them you know the props making the props uh that's about and I remember the editing I remember because that was done in the basement where I grew up so we had they they got some stuff and they were editing down there a lot actually the next picture too was edited there too in the basement of our house so you said you were you were actually practicing with oh with some of the leftovers yeah because the leftover stuff I learned to edit on film with that yeah so that was cool but now we know what happened to the outakes of Wanda well that's well they said they weren't using it so stuff that threw away um yeah can you tell us about um well actually here's a question for you I've always wanted to know this did your to your recollection did your mother change in any way through the process of working on Wanda or through the exhibition was she always the same to you in your opinion the same the same yeah just you know so success or the critical success had no Effect one way or the other the or the process of making it she was she was uh she enjoyed a period of it being very happy about everything but uh she was staying busy she just started to work on plays and started to direct she was always working on projects so it was just another it was a thing and it had a you know it had a good impact at the time and she was very proud about and then she was working on several of other scripts uh with Nick peris actually too uh and it was similar kind of stuff real life kind of things uh and have those scripts so was interesting but and tell us how the production came about you were telling us over dinner the story of with uh with Harry Schuster uh cuz my mother had met Harry Schuster at a party and uh who is he again well he he was he he used to have a thing called Lion Country Safari which is I don't know if anybody remembers that that was in uh out here and you could go on a safari and see all these animals and things and they were at a party and and Kazan my stepfather was friends with him and he he said are you in any movies what are you doing Barbara and he she said I'm not uh I'm uh I have a script and I have a thing and U trying to get this movie made he says I I I can get I think get the money for you and and and she's really and it's fine and then then once that happened then it took on a life because then my stepfather was like wow it's amazing well now can make this movie you know and it at the whole thing took uh to and then uh they had a uh a a film Foundation they made a foundation which to make movies that they wanted to kind of make and that was the first movie was was uh from the film found I mean what did I say Foundation I was I was confused that there's another place right yeah anyway so uh that was how that that started and the idea was they were going to make type of films they wanted to make with this Foundation but Wanda was kind of like I think the only one that got made with the foundation so did she ever speak of Wanda in retrospect or her experiences working on it she does in there's a documentary which they made you know it's on the Criterion you been Wanda yeah was that I I am Wanda I am Wanda yeah and in that she does talk a lot about Wanda and how she made it and stuff and there's uh you know there were a lot of Articles at the time uh where she talked extensively about it uh you know when it came out do you I know you were quite young but do you remember meeting any of the characters like the local characters who because you have actors like Michael Higgins and and your mother but then you've also got the non-actors do you have any I guess we were at that Lake where the where the bankr where the uh uh the president of the bank was where they go to his house he had some kids and stuff and we were playing in the lake with the kids I mean this is that kind of thing you know what am I going to do I was like seven or eight years old but uh you know the point is uh that's you know outside of like I was very interested in films and stuff though as a kid you know that was around and so I was like you know are you going to have a going to have a bank are you going to have like a car chase in the movie and oh well no we don't think it's and as oh you know that was a kind you know what I mean I was like I was like we're g to have some action here you know uh but uh I that was about my extent of of like Dy the only thing is the editing I was around for a lot of the editing and because we I come home from school and watch see what they were doing and it took a long time the editing I think the first cut was was pretty long like is that do you know about I think two and a half hours or something and and they sat and they're like oh my God and it got cut down a little bit and got much better interesting and I guess you were too young to remember any of the shooting of you would have been very young for the like uh for the shooting of kazan's last film The Arrangement so this would be the first that you remember I would imagine no while I was on I remember that but I was but yeah was almost but I know why I I I was on the side of that and yeah for a little bit well tell us a little bit about the visitors and and and how it might have followed from Wanda okay well the visitors was Chris Kazan my stepfather's son and he wrote it and uh it was filmed in in this Connecticut house that they had so that was uh and it was influenced by Wanda in that as you were saying in your presentation uh that my step said wow you know she did so great with this film I'd like to go back and make a little budget picture too you know and that's how the visitors came about um so uh and what else uh Chris was a very smart the guy who wrote it it was a very nice guy my my stepbrother and uh he passed away uh young but uh uh they filmed it mostly there in Connecticut I believe in the uh New Town yeah and although it's not really NE realistic I always think you know these films bear some importance to the the lives of of the makers and I was wondering would there have been any discussion how the visitors in some ways resonates with kazan's troubles with huak in the way that on the waterfront that's a big question perhaps I I think there's always a bit of that in the later Kazan you know works because trying to work through things and uh there's definitely you could that's a very good point that it's the Vietnam thing and everything is is similar to you know that someone was an outat that they were a hero in the Vietnam they come back they're nobody wants them that kind of thing uh so it's a very interesting uh comparison I that's a good one um I'm only to ask one more question before I throw it up to the audience but I did want you to talk about a little bit about one interesting thing about the visitors which is coming up is that this is really the first film roles for uh uh James Woods and Steve railsback right who went on to have very notable careers and uh it it uh follows in that long you Kazan tradition which you we were discussing at dinner about kind of helping discover certain people can you talk about your memories of them well Steve Rach was a really nice guy he was a lot of fun and uh I don't but you would not know from watching this movie or his role as Charles Manson and helter skel that's right he played the Charles Manson role in this helter SK in the in the movie and he was scary but he also was in uh the stunt man with Peter otou and he was it was starting to become very big uh at some point Point uh but he was a very nice guy very intense actor and stuff and and and he was also in some uh he was good friends with us he he was one of those guys around came around the house a lot and you know talked about art and movies and stuff and my mother liked him my mother got along with him uh so but I don't remember I don't really remember the James Woods that much uh at the time I don't remember right oh and you were also just speaking of how the your your home was this Center for creativity you know even at the time when their careers on the surface are not as big of course you know well you why don't you talk a little bit about your mother's theatrical and teaching career because you were telling us an interesting story about Christopher Reeves uh over oh yes well that that was a good one well my mother after Wanda and everything she started doing uh Off Broadway shows directing and she do acting classes and one of the people people was Chris Reeves he was in a uh in a a place he had about AA braa and uh and he was quite young then uh very young his first role or something and uh at some point he was coached uh I think it's in his book but uh about uh my mother was coaching him for Superman and I remember him uh you know coming by and uh and uh she had some very interesting things to say about uh helping him uh playing more sensitive part and not doing the typical thing in the first Superman movie and he was coming over and she was coaching him for the whole thing and then he said I got the part and he came all oh my God and that was a big deal he was around a lot you know he was a very nice guy what was that advice that you said that she oh that that that she said you're going to this is I remember this is she said when you when you put on the outfit they're they're going to accept you Superman this is going to be a big picture you you know so but what can you bring to it as an actor uh and bring in your own thing how would you know we know he's going to play You're going to play Clark Kent that that's a sort of how can you bring something new to the part and from your own self and uh that's and you know and I think if you watch the first Superman movie with Chris Reeves he's very sensitive in it which is which is new they you know Superman wasn't sensitive and necessarily I mean you know I mate you going way back in the movies and things they made he was the first sort of sensitive Superman and that I think that comes from that coaching so that was interesting let's throw it up to the audience here if we have any questions for Marco anywhere what are the other scripts about and is there any interest in publishing them uh yes in fact I'm supposed to try to get a published the Wanda script at some point because i' F I've gotten all of them together there's a lot of different versions of it and stuff and but in terms of the other stuff um maybe maybe I could I haven't had you know it's it's just there's so many things going on with the distribution in the first place of the of the movie again but uh that's something that I should be looking into can you just give us a real short a short little prey of what they're about uh one was called movie star and it was about um another character that my mother would play and U and and uh her rise to the top and some it was something like that but it was very heroine and stuff too uh you know it was not pretty uh uh I think that was sort of like it was like an alcoholic actress who like so Rises to the top or something something like that and was interesting uh what was the other one uh well I have them all at my house uh I can't remember right now the other one uh Till There Was You there's something called Till There Was You uh there was an adaptation of the Awakening which is which which is Kate chopan if anybody knows and there's like a whole script of that there's a bunch of things there she was always working and uh up until she like I said up she was before she died she was in a play uh was a a five and time Jimmy D Jimmy Dean and uh that was very hard to for her to get through yeah directing it and then also uh filling in for the lead role Sandy Dennis uh she wasn't supposed to be in it and the last minute uh Sandy Dennis couldn't do it after being do all the rehearsals so my mother had to learn lines really quickly when she was like sick you know with cancer and things it was but uh she was always working always directing uh at acting classes that she taught and know so some other questions from the audience over there this is just kind of a simple question but your mother inhabits that role so totally it's like the one of the great roles of Cinema um but she's also acting she's a person and you might just have some insight especially since you were on set of just you know we see Wanda the character just a fantastic character but just very simply like how's your how was your mother different as a person from the this character that we know her by oh well she had a well she was very funny actually had a she was a had a very good sense of humor so she was she was fun she was she was kind of depressed too I would say she's she was uh had some you know was had some uh just you know wasn't that happy about certain things in life but she was very also very happy and in other ways and encouraged about other things um she was how can I say it's what she portrayed is a part of her you know but she also was a lot of like a lot of fun really in you know wasn't she was very intellectual actually very smart but but I mean you know self-taught in that way uh she you know um uh so she was uh like it would say she wasn't like that if you met her she wouldn't be like that but she she did come from a rough background uh in terms of uh you know her upbringing she came from a r rough background and uh you know very uh lowincome kind of family and stuff uh and uh had it rough I mean I think she ran I think I don't know ran away but I uh I she ended up in New York like at like 17 or something on a you know from uh North Carolina so there was nothing to do in North Carolina so she's that whole world that's in the picture she knows what that's like and where you know in those days that was kind of you could be a waitress in town or whatever you're going to do but that was about all you could do you know what I mean in those days and so there weren't that many opportunities so he came to New York to become come something and then she did that's one thing I'll just add to that too is I mean obviously her performance is extraordinary and and people rightly associate her with the role but I also don't know if it quite does enough Justice to say that it is her because in if you look at the other film roles that she has the roles are quite small but she really captures the screen from some very notable cast members she commands every scene that she's in no matter how small her role is if you watch the other films that she's in your eyes can't go off her and the only thing that we really since those there I guess there's the early Ern cack things which I think are quite good although I haven't seen them in years but the the major role that she really had was after the fall which it it's hard to describe how successful that was she took over Broadway with that I mean it was huge it was like you saw it on the cover of the Saturday evening Post in the slideshow and this was getting major writeups but then she just never had the opportunities after that so I think you she really was this major actress that that just again didn't have the chances to that I mean it's you're right because when you look at Splender the grass I mean she's like completely different character in that yeah they're small roles but she really just takes over it's it's kind of uncanny so some other questions that's nothing oh okay one more should we do one more and then we'll go to the break okay uh do you know much about the locations uh like in town was that was that a actual bank that they just shut down for for filming the bank scene was a complicated scene apparently and uh yeah they had to well that's why there was a bit of a budget for the picture I want to say it was $100,000 budget I think I think a little more than that I have it in my notes I don't recall uh yeah uh that's why the than that little more than that but not much yeah um everything oh we were going to say is you know most of the there's only my mother Michael Higgins and another the maybe the husband of my mother in the movie look were the actors everybody else is real people and uh um like the bank tellers the the guy who works at the factory these are all everybody was real real they used they they say you want to be in a movie and and uh we got a film okay and so nobody else was was a real actor except for my mother and Michael Higgins and one other person oh that's that's one of the charms of the film I think speaking of this this does follow up on our our series though am I right in uh from what I've uh read your mother was uh really pretty well vered and she would be going to International art films and she would have been familiar with Italian neorealists and oh yes she loved uh Luis bunell and uh uh L cini and all these kind of things and she was very uh into uh you know uh foreign films and uh so on the one hand you had the Practical necessity of of not having a budget that led her to this aesthetic but she was also primed to know how to you know to to not be stuck in a Hollywood uh model she always wanted to do these uh you know these the TP she was very you know knew what she wanted that's the thing so one thing that well I think that's why Wanda succeeds because she really made her picture you could have she could have done it many different ways uh right and it it could have been done many different ways but uh she really had a vision that came through with that and uh and I think Nick preferes worked great with her as a cameraman uh some of the camera work is great in that picture I think and how you know sort of co-h helped the whole thing so and Kazan helped Kazan helped during the bank scene he was at the bank scene because it was rather complicated because there were so many things going on he act as a second director to my mother and that's not the first director but a second just to help because the bank schene was rather complicated as I remember they said yeah it looks like a big a big too big everything else was smaller you know but that was complicated so uh but the oh I think was in carbon Carbondale I want to say is the name of the town I think oh scanton stranton well there was another oh we were looking at car we were near there right uh but I think uh all the locations were there there's you know it's all just uh that's all it was it was just uh right on they there was no sets they just filmed in the houses and filmed everywhere you can see that that's all they great well Marco thank you so much for joining us thank you okay and thank you thank you Ross for everything you've done and he's done it Ross did a terrific job on the restoration and everything and his presentation I got to give him that that's fantastic and thanks and we're going to have a short break and then I hope you'll join us to see what Kazan followed up wand's with