The Savage Eye

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
The Savage Eye
File:Savage Eye poster.jpg
Film Poster for The Savage Eye (1959)
Directed by Ben Maddow
Sidney Meyers
Joseph Strick
Produced by Ben Maddow
Sidney Meyers
Joseph Strick
Written by Ben Maddow
Sidney Meyers
Joseph Strick
Starring Barbara Baxley
Herschel Bernardi
Jean Hidey
Elizabeth Zemach
Gary Merrill
Music by Leonard Rosenman
Cinematography Jack Couffer
Helen Levitt
Haskell Wexler
Edited by Ben Maddow
Sidney Meyers
Joseph Strick
Distributed by Trans-Lux Distributing-Kingsley International
Release dates
 June 6, 1960
Running time
 68 minutes
Country USA
Budget $65,000

The Savage Eye is a 1959 "dramatized documentary" film that superposes a dramatic narration of the life of a divorced woman with documentary camera footage of an unspecified 1950s city. In a 1960 review, A. H. Weiler characterized the film:[1]

<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

... it is from the photographic and sound-track concentration on the Hogarthian faces of Los Angeles that The Savage Eye derives most of its ferocity. The rabid wrestling-match audiences; the middle-aged and elderly ladies seeking improvement of gross bodies in beauty parlors; the sensuous writhings of Jean (Venus the Body) Hidey as she strips and teases in a burlesque joint, and, most effectively, the matter-of-fact faith healer who doles out wholesale blessings on the afflicted (done with a direct voice and sound track) are the most striking glints in The Savage Eye.

The film was written, produced, directed, and edited by Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, and Joseph Strick, who did the work over several years on their weekends. Benjamin Jackson has noted that Irving Lerner, Strick's collaborator on the earlier documentary Muscle Beach (1948), "was part of the original group, but left in the middle of production."[2] The camera footage for the film was done over these years by the principal cinemaphotographers Haskell Wexler, Helen Levitt,[2] and Jack Couffer; the sound editing for the film was one of Verna Fields' early credits. The film won the 1960 BAFTA Flaherty Documentary Award as well as several film festival prizes. Reviewing its debut at the 1959 Edinburgh Film Festival, the art critic David Sylvester called its imagery "sharp, intense, spectacular, and imaginative".[3]

The Savage Eye is often considered to be part of the cinema vérité movement of the 1950s and 1960s; John Hagan has written further of the film's influence that:[4] "One can see how, in its study of a woman whose marital problems have estranged her from the world, it anticipated, if not influenced, such films as The Misfits, Red Desert, and Juliet of the Spirits."

See also

References

<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />

Cite error: Invalid <references> tag; parameter "group" is allowed only.

Use <references />, or <references group="..." />

External links


<templatestyles src="Asbox/styles.css"></templatestyles>

Stub icon

This article about a documentary film is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.. A second woman known primarily for her work as a film writer is also named "Helen Levitt." This review, which is perhaps the most comprehensive discussion of The Savage Eye in the literature, clarifies that the cinematography was indeed done by the distinguished photographer of the same name.
  3. ↑ Sylvester is quoted in Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=The_Savage_Eye&oldid=703259478"