Wanda, 1971. Written and directed by Barbara Loden. Starring Loden, Michael Higgins, Jerome Thier, and Frank Jourdano.
You Only Live Once, 1937. Directed by Fritz Lang, written by Gene Towne and C. Graham Baker. Starring Henry Fonda, Sylvia Sidney, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon, William Gargan, Jerome Cowan, John Wray Walter, and Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams.
Who’s in prison today? The poor, minorities mostly, those gang-bangers who make us shudder en route to a night of fine dining in Block E? One thing I’m certain of: they’re no longer Clyde Barrow or Al Capone. Someone as handsome as Warren Beatty or trafficking in such luscious diversions as bathtub gin only inspires our imaginations, not our fears. We love those guys. Why, we have tours of Capone’s favorite hideouts, restaurants advertise as the place where bootleggers go, and Prohibition was a blast, don’t you know? Keillor telling us he used to imagine himself as Starkweather, but I doubt you’re gonna get any white writer to say he or she thinks of themselves as some kind of drug dealer, the Capone of today. Crime films, like those in the 30s and 70s, championed the white criminal, pushed into his or her trade by forces beyond their control, victims of an unjust and ironic world. Johnny Cash played concerts to these fellows. No one plays concerts to jailbirds anymore.
If a guy pulls a gun on you, what difference does it make if he’s white or black? Well, in Hollywood, it makes the difference between boffo box office and a big-fat flop.
Look there, at Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. 1930s. 1970s. In the first, an innocent man is convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s a three time loser, this Eddie Taylor (Hank Fonda). His wife, Joan (Sylvia Sidney), implores him to give up at first, to trust the system. He does, fails to beat the rap, goes to jail to wait on the chair. And look at that prison! A gulag of hardworking European immigrants, many guilty as sin; others, like Eddie, victims of circumstance. It was the Depression after all. We can forgive these boys, with their funny way of talking tough, their hardened camaraderie. Lang makes Hank Fonda growl and rage with more intensity than he ever showed before (ever–it’s an amazing performance), and we growl and rage right along with him. When he busts out and kills a priest in the process, we’re aghast at the injustice. Eddie and Joan, on the lam, will meet a rough end, but they’ll also reach some sort of spiritual catharsis.
Wanda, on the other hand, is just no good. She’s a white-trash blonde from Pennsylvania coal-country, who simply gives her husband the divorce he’s seeking (in order to be with a woman who will actually care for the pair of kids he and Wanda have sired) and she’s off, without money, hooking up with some of the most honestly portrayed men in cinematic history–losers all, yet everyone in possession of a tiny slice of dignity. Barbara Loden’s film is incredible in that it doesn’t politicize Wanda’s journey from man to man and finally to Mr. Dennis, a criminal who takes her on a bumbling and fatal robbery spree. Loden doesn’t care to damn Wanda, nor does she elevate her to being some sort of feminist icon, or a symbol of the free-love, wanderin’ decade. Wanda is simply a silly, lost woman, not bright, who seeks love in all the wrong places and whose ennui defines her. Nothing goes right for her, nothing will ever go right for her. We know that, and still we’re riveted by her sad story.
Now imagine, if you will, a remake of both of these films today. Would we, white audiences (my guess is that Rake readers are predominantly white) who make up the lion’s share of the box office, embrace a black Eddie on the lam for a job he didn’t commit? Some three time loser from the North side, black and not wearing suits and ties (as Eddie does in this film), but as equally articulate as Fonda (Eddie’s a handsome and sharp tongued fellow in You Only Live Once, a far cry from anyone in his shoes in real life), who is set up in, say, a gang murder, or robbery?
Or if a black woman, abandoning her kids because she claims she’s “just no good” and then hits the road holding up bars and banks would elicit any sympathy from us? She’d be a candidate for Jerry Springer, maybe, if she would shout more.
Something tells me there’s not a chance in hell. These films wouldn’t play anywhere in the suburbs… unless they had some sort of Oscar-winning rap soundtrack. Even then, it’s a slim chance.
Something also tells me there’s not a chance in hell that you could even get financing for such ventures. But if we want, we can try, I guess, to watch these movies, on DVD both (Wanda from the library, You Only Live Once from Netflix) and imagine ourselves in the shoes of today’s criminal. That’s the point, you know, the reason we watch these movies, and watched them, in years past (Wanda more today–the film played in literally one theater in America). We are not just supposed to be excited by the story, but relate, at least a little bit, to the characters we see. We are supposed to fall in love with Eddie and Joan, who rob gas stations and eventually get plugged. We are supposed to feel for Wanda, who’s probably never going to see her children again, choosing to fuck anyone and never have a good relationship.
Get this: Eddie and Joan and Wanda walk these streets. We don’t need to walk up and hug them, don’t need to hope that criminals get soft sentences or forgiveness for violent crime. But perhaps we do need to watch movies like these and understand that old adage, “there, but for the grace of God, go I”. In the slums, in Uptown, even in the suburbs (perhaps especially in the suburbs), we’re all just a mood away from flooring it and being on the lam, two steps away from the gallows, a hair-trigger from ultimate freedom.
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