The Savage Eye is a "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:
The film was written, produced, directed, and edited by Ben Maddow

Ben Maddow

Ben Maddow was a prolific screenwriter and documentarian from the 1930s through the 70s. Educated at Columbia University, Maddow began his career working within the American documentary movement in the 30s.In 1936 he co-founded the short-lived left-wing newsreel The World Today...

, Sidney Meyers

Sidney Meyers

Sidney Meyers was an American film director and editor.Sidney Meyers is best known for two documentary films: The Quiet One, which he wrote and directed, and for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay; and British Academy of Film and Television Arts winner The Savage Eye,...

, and Joseph Strick

Joseph Strick

Joseph Strick was an American director, producer and screenwriter.Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Strick briefly attended UCLA before enrolling in the Army during World War II. In the Army, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Forces.In 1948, he and Irving Lerner produced Muscle Beach...

, who did the work over several years on their weekends. Benjamin Jackson has noted that Irving Lerner

Irving Lerner

Irving Lerner Before becoming a filmmaker, Lerner was a research editor for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, getting his start in film by making documentaries for the anthropology department. In the early 1930s, he was a member of the Workers Film and Photo League, and later,...

, Strick's collaborator on the earlier documentary Muscle Beach

Muscle Beach (film)

Muscle Beach is a short documentary film directed by Joseph Strick and Irving Lerner, showing amateur athletes and bodybuilders at "Muscle Beach" in Santa Monica, California...

(1948), "was part of the original group, but left in the middle of production." The camera footage for the film was done over these years by the principal cinemaphotographers Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...

, Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for "street photography" around New York City, and has been called "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."- Biography :...

, and Jack Couffer

Jack Couffer

Jack Couffer A.S.C. is an American cinematographer and film and television director. Couffer has specialized on documentary films, often involving nature and animal cinematography...

; the sound editing for the film was one of Verna Fields

Verna Fields

Verna Fields was an American film editor, film and television sound editor, educator, and entertainment industry executive. In the first phase of her career, from 1954 through to about 1970, Fields mostly worked on smaller projects that gained little recognition. She was the sound editor for...

' early credits. The film won the 1960 BAFTA Flaherty Documentary Award

British Academy Television Awards

The British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . They have been awarded annually since 1954, and are analogous to the Emmy Awards in the United States.-Background:...

 as well as several film festival prizes. Reviewing its debut at the 1959 Edinburgh Film Festival, the art critic David Sylvester

David Sylvester

Anthony David Bernard Sylvester CBE, was a British art critic and curator. Although he received no formal education in the arts, during his long career he was influential in promoting modern artists, in particular the work of Joan Miró, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.Born into a well connected...

 called its imagery "sharp, intense, spectacular, and imaginative".

The Savage Eye is often considered to be part of the cinema vérité

Cinéma vérité

Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...

 movement of the 1950s and 60s; John Hagan has written further of the film's influence that: "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

The Misfits (film)

The Misfits is a 1961 American drama film written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach. It was the final film appearance for both Gable and Monroe...

, Red Desert, and Juliet of the Spirits

Juliet of the Spirits

Juliet of the Spirits is a 1965 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini that uses "caricatural types and dream situations to represent a psychic landscape"...

."