THE SAVAGE EYE (1959)

         Whenever I start to feel I’ve seen it all, a film comes along to reframe my delusion.  Most recently – and as so often is the case – I discovered this oddball offering while looking for something completely unlike it on Tubi.  I’m glad I did.

         The Savage Eye is a groundbreaking independent that mixed documentary and fictional techniques to tell the story of a newly divorced woman in her wanderings through mid-century Los Angeles.  Its themes of emotional turmoil, urban alienation and nagging uncertainty were unlike anything moviegoers encountered in the late-’50’s.  Despite the sixty-six-year gap, its rampant cynicism feels as contemporary as our present discussions regarding AI.  Which is not to say it’s a depressing watch.  I saw it as a reminder that despite outward indications, many aspects of human nature never change.

         Nothing about The Savage Eye was birthed simply or easily.  Produced over four years of intermittent weekends and stolen moments, it took a tag-team of three writer\directors and three cinematographers to bring it to fruition.  Evoking a surreal atmosphere, there’s no sync-sound, just an off-camera dialogue between main character Judith McGuire (Barbara Baxley) and a mysterious presence called The Poet (voiced by well-known Hollywood fixture Gary Merrill).  Working on a $65,000 budget, they all seem to have squeezed every drop out of the lemon.

         Directors Ben Maddow (1909-1992) and Sidney Meyers (1906-1969) spent the bulk of their careers in the documentary realm, each with propensities for progressive, left-leaning material.  Joseph Strick (1923-2010) – a Best Documentary Short Oscar-winner for 1970’s Interviews with My Lai Veterans – was also a noted feature director, with such titles as The Balcony (1963; George Folsey, ASC), Ulysses (1967; Wolfgang Suschitzky), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977; Stuart Hetherington) and Never Cry Wolf (1983; Hiro Narita, ASC) appearing on his resumé.

         On the cinematography side, two future ASC members made significant contributions to the proceedings: First was Haskell Wexler – who would go on to win an Academy Award for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966; Mike Nichols) and Bound for Glory (1976; Hal Ashby).  Hot on his heels was Jack Couffer, who later made his name as the industry’s premier wildlife photographer while based in Africa.  Helen Levitt, better known as a still photographer, also pitched in to capture some of the movie’s grotesque, satirical visuals.

         Together, their experimental approach mixed run-and-gun docu-realism with a scripted story.  While it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly who-did-what across The Savage Eye’s sixty-eight-minute running time, it’s amazing that the widely-scattered efforts of the camera team hung together so well.  Their grainy textures reflected a lyrical, detached quality that was as far removed from the traditional Hollywood treatment as it was possible to be.

         The film won BAFTA’s Robert Flaherty Documentary Award the same year of its release and thereafter garnered a number of festival honors.  Though ignored by general audiences back in the day, it’s now easy to see how it presaged the dissonance of many important films of the ’60’s and ’70’s.  In recognition of its significance, it was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2008; it was released on BluRay in 2025.

         Oh…and in a move that would have excited my schoolboy curiosity had I been of age to see it at the time, The Savage Eye was banned by the Legion of Decency for being “morally repugnant.”  So, if you’d like to explore feelings of alienation and existential anxiety amid LA’s sun-bleached sprawl – and get a kick by flaunting institutional censorship –  this is indeed the movie for you!