The Savage Eye

Description courtesy of Lightbox Film Center:
In 1959, a trio of outsider filmmakers – formerly blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow (The Asphalt Jungle), Oscar® nominated editor/director Sidney Meyers (The Quiet One) and future Oscar® winning director Joseph Strick (Interviews with My Lai Veterans) – wrote, produced, edited and directed this ‘dramatized documentary’ that San Francisco Cinematheque calls “a masterpiece of verité cinema.”

Adrift and bitter after her recent divorce, a woman (Barbara Baxley, Nashville, Norma Rae) moves through a purgatorial Los Angeles confronted by the poetic grotesqueries of the city’s leering landmarks and underground spaces – to the film’s devastated protagonist this is all apocalyptic spectacle. Gary Merrill (All About Eve) co-stars as the woman’s condemnatory internal voice in this “knockout of a film” (Kier-La Janisse, House of Psychotic Women).

Part Mondo film, part stream-of-consciousness experiment, part one-woman scream into the void, The Savage Eye was filmed on location over a period of four years by a team of cinematographers that included 2x Academy Award® winner Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool), Academy Award® nominee Jack Couffer (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) and esteemed street photographer Helen Levitt – with sound editing by Academy Award® winner Verna Fields (Jaws) – capturing a Los Angeles that, in many ways, no longer exists. (Ben Maddow/Sidney Meyers/Joseph Strick, USA, 1959, 68 min., b&w)

Newly scanned in 4K and restored by Severin Films from the original camera negative preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

MovieJawn will be slinging zines and cinematic goodies in the lobby before and after the showing. Stop by and say hi to your friendly MovieJawn staff.

Location: Lightbox Film Center, The Living Room at Bok, 800 Mifflin Street Philadelphia, PA 19148
Showtime: Wednesday, March 26, 7pm
Tickets available here