In 1959, after filming over weekends for four years, filmmakers Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, and Joseph Strick completed The Savage Eye. Part vérité portrait of Los Angeles, part modernist delirium, their film represented a genuinely new (and still inimitable) kind of film for the United States. Its detached ethnographic gaze spooked Jonas Mekas, who claimed its cynicism could only be explained by “the fact that it was shot in California,” and its puzzle-like narrative agreed with European audiences, who applauded its verve and received it as a welcome example of the fact that similar experiments to those of the Nouvelle Vague in France and Free Cinema in the United Kingdom were taking place at the doorsteps of Hollywood. For these, and many more reasons, it is our delight to be able to showcase the the 4K restoration by Severin Films of The Savage Eye this week.

According to Strick, The Savage Eye was conceived as a film about the trio’s “vision of Los Angeles.” But, somewhere along the way, the formerly blacklisted Maddow, who was primarily responsible for the film’s script, and Strick decided to frame The Savage Eye around Judith X, a recent divorcée who moves to LA and bears witness to all of its grotesque rituals — detailed in a stream-of-consciousness voiceover that takes the form of a conversation between Judith and a pesky unnamed male reporter who may or may not be her very conscience. To quote the film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, their commentary sounds “like T.S. Eliot strained through pulp.”

“You don’t decide on anything till everybody’s on the set, or on the location. You see the elements develop, and you develop them.” JOSEPH STRICK

While it goes without saying that The Savage Eye was ahead of its time in its critique of numerous American vulgarities — rampant commercialism, pervasive misogyny, religious fanaticism — and its intricate formal design, more must be said about its collaborators and their influence on the film. These included cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Helen Levitt, among others, who agreed to work on the project on the merits of its premise rather than the expectation of financial returns. This free-spirited and unvarnished camerawork, which both Wexler and Levitt would become more famous for in projects like Medium Cool and the book A Way of Seeing, respectively, distinguishes The Savage Eye from similar American films of the era. Later in life, Wexler said “it was very badly planned [but] a good time,” with Strick adding that the collaborative nature of The Savage Eye’s direction, script, and cinematography added to the alchemical wonders of the film, where it feels like there resides a camera in each corner of LA, and with it a new perspective that complicates its running commentary of the city. 

This modernist flair — a specialty of Strick’s — courses through The Savage Eye’s winding tour of LA. The film was as much inspired by the painter and satirist William Hogarth as it was by the Irish writer James Joyce, both clear influences on its ornate compositions and critical attacks against society. (Strick, soon after, adapted Joyce’s Ulysses and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer for the silver screen.) The directors saw The Savage Eye as a resolutely modernist film and it was their ambition to have multiple renowned thinkers from around the world, such as Sartre and Cocteau, contribute to its overseas soundtracks. They wanted to create a film that responded to the cultural dilemmas of where it was seen, malleable in form and open to multiple interpretations.

Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, and Joseph Strick were all outliers in Hollywood. Maddow, who wrote screenplays for The Asphalt Jungle and Johnny Guitar (with Nicholas Ray and Philip Yordan) was blacklisted in 1952 for alleged ties to the Communist Party. He had also, in 1932, co-founded the left-wing film newsreel The World Today and co-wrote the screenplay for Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand’s landmark documentary Native Land. Meyers, who edited such films as Edge of the City and Samuel Beckett’s Film, was also involved in left-wing art collectives in the ‘30s. In 1948, he directed The Quiet One, a documentary about the rehabilitation of an emotionally-disturbed Black 10-year-old. Strick attended UCLA before acting as a cameraman for the Army Air Forces during World World II. Upon return, he teamed up with Maddow and Meyers to direct The Savage Eye, and further made a series of politically challenging as well as inspired adaptations of literary classics.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Betsy Strick and Kier-La Janisse at Severin Films, who have made available their 4K restoration for this special one-week presentation.