Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
31	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	1	2	3	4

Joseph Strick – The Savage Eye (1959)

Posted By: newland

Date: 11 Jul 2010 18:41:03

This drama takes the form of a story told using documentary material as an intrinsic part of the narrative. In this journey through the dark side of 1950s urban life, the camera follows Judith –a newly divorced woman looking for a fresh start– through the streets of Los Angeles as she encounters the strange denizens of the city, ranging from trendsetters to religious fanatics. All the tawdry and desperate faces of this world become a mirror for Judith's personal failures and struggles to claim her new life.

Judith McGuire débarque à l'aéroport de Los Angeles. Elle vient de divorcer et espère refaire sa vie dans la cité des anges. Une voix l'accoste, c'est le narrateur du film. Un dialogue s'instaure entre cette âme troublée et celui qui se présente comme "le poète". Ensemble, ils traversent la ville, en s'enfonçant toujours plus loin dans les sept cercles de l'enfer.

Although it is clouded by an overabundantly lush, consciously poetic narration and it is as cold as a scalpel in its dissection, this dramatized documentary of a year in the life and thoughts of a young divorcée is obviously a labor of love and a forceful display of cinematic pyrotechnics.
The independent, dedicated triumvirate who made it—Sidney Meyers, Ben Maddow and Joseph Strick—appear to be devoted more to truth than to the commercial advantages of gentle fiction, and in their photographic essay they have come up with a raw, Daumier-like commentary on the disenchanted, the disillusioned, the hopeless and the lost people of contemporary society. Their hearts are in their work but they emerge as dispassionate research scientists rather than poets with stars in their eyes.
Let there be no doubt that they are artists. Produced for about $65,000 over a period of approximately four years of week-ends, or whatever time was available for all concerned, "The Savage Eye" represents the efforts of a variety of professionals. Mr. Maddow has written the scripts for such noted films as "The Asphalt Jungle," "Intruder in the Dust" and "The Unforgiven." Mr. Meyers has directed many documentaries and is known especially for his work on "The Quiet One." And Mr. Strick has directed such caustic fact films as "Muscle Beach" and "The Big Break." — A.H. Weiler, The New York Times

A film light years ahead of its time. An amazing roller-coaster ride through the full range of human emotions, The Savage Eye is just as remarkable today as when it was first made, and the title is so apt and pertinent. Didactic and profound, it comes across almost as a warning or an alert to human society showing us the high price paid by our psyches for the "joys" of civilisation. The things we really need we ignore and despise, and instead pursue an empty materialism that leaves our "souls" impoverished and starved; not because we choose to do so, but because we mindlessly drift along with whatever the dominant ideology of the day tells us we should want. Brilliantly assembled and conceived, it is one of those films that once seen will linger deep in your subconscious forever. — Dave Godin from Sheffield, England, IMDb review

One of the most historically interesting aspects of The Savage Eye today is the degree to which it seems both ahead of and behind its own time in relation to modernism. While the commentary and score tend to remain just as dated and as “moderne” as they were in 1960, the iconographic surface of the film and certain other aspects (including the ethnographic detachment) are striking anticipations of images and ideas which would inform cinematic modernism over the following two decades. set the offscreen voices of Merrill and Baxley alongside those of Godard and Marina Vlady, and the hat store and beauty parlor of The Savage Eye (among other settings and references) become startling approximations of the no less sociologically approached boutique and hairdresser in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. The use of stream-of-consciousness — no less pronounced in Godard’s The Married Woman, where it is also juxtaposed with sociology — is equally evident. By the same token, the film’s fascination with car accidents parallels a comparable obsession in contemporary painting, sculpture, and fiction. Even the pitiless voyeurism towards (and through) sex, violence, and psychosis seems to echo certain attitudes and preoccupations in such varied writers and directors as Ballard, Beckett, Buñuel, Burroughs, Flannery O’Connor, Franju, Kubrick, Robbe-Grillet, and Nathanael West, while a brief, melodically fragmented atonal piano theme used for dramatic emphasis evokes a similar use of one in Antonioni’s Eclipse. — Jonathan Rosenbaum