Thursday 14 January 2010

Savage Eye, The - Filmhouse - 14/1/10

Part documentary, part drama, part stream of consciousness, part social document, part beat poem...totally brilliant.

This 1960 movie from director Joseph Strick presents a few days in the life of tragic divorcee, Judith, as she navigates her new life in Los Angeles. It's a life filled with loneliness, brief encounters, longing for her husband, loathing for his new partner, wrestling matches, burlesque clubs, drag bars and "masturbation by proxy" as she describes one loveless love match.

Accompanying Judith is her conscience played by the camera lens who is as much a character as Judith is and who provides the means by which we see the world that she inhabits.

At a little over an hour this is a magical, tragic, hypnotic and poetic film. Nobody really speaks, the narration is provided by Judith and her conscience...like a beat poem Ginsburg or Burroughs would have been proud of. It also reminded me a little of "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept" which is always a good thing.

A film I had never heard of from a director I was totally unaware of but which is now permanently etched on my memory.

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