The Savage Eye

One of cinematographer Haskell Wexler's earliest efforts that unabashedly reflects the influence of Edward Hopper and depressing street scenes. Barbara Baxley's heartfelt "everywoman" performance is nothing short of amazing. The supporting cast, led by Herschel Bernardi, is also magnificent. THe funny thing about this chronolgue of American hopelessness is that it is much better known in the European Art House circuit than here among the US indy crowd. It definitely should get more exposure; I give it 10 out of 10.

That sounds like a heady comment, "best film about LA street life ever made," but I stick by it. Encapsulated in the rather thin plot, about a divorcee wandering the city, this is really a documentary on Los Angeles in 1959, and an amazing one at that. No one who lives here should feel they really know what it was like until they see this film, which includes footage of a New Year's celebration, the roller derby, a wrestling match, a strip club, and yes, the Second Street Tunnel again.

Anyone who thinks of the 1950s as a plastic people sort of place must see this marvelous film. Cast as a documentary about a woman the first year after her divorce, it is really a travelogue through the underside the 1950s, the part the Beaver Cleavers didn't want to see. In a deeper sense, it touched on the universal sorrows of a person cast loose from her contact with people (something I understand well as I go through my own divorce). It shows graphically that there is nothing sadder than a human being cast out of her or his group. So it's a tale specific to the late 1950s, but simultaneously universal in its assessment of the human condition.

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.

This film features wonderful documentary footage of Los Angeles circa 1959, and is a valuable artifact for that reason alone. Unfortunately, the woeful attempt to form the footage into a narrative featuring actress Barbara Baxley as a lonely woman wandering the city and sharing insufferably pretentious voice-over with Gary Merrill (pompously billed as "The Poet") make the film a chore to endure.

I enjoy seeing this kind of footage, showing me how a city I love looked in another age, but the grandstanding voice-over is a deal breaker. Except for the disturbing faith-healer sequence, which is the only portion of the film to use sync sound, this is a movie best enjoyed with the volume turned down and some good music playing, maybe a little jazz from the era.