Savages (1972)

This Merchant-Ivory production was savaged (so to speak)by the critics in its day and they had good reaspn. Clearly indebted to Luis Buñuel’s 1962 classic The Exterminating Angel, and indeed to Surrealism in general, and written by George Swift Trow and Michael O'Donoghue from an idea by Ivory, it is a long-winded satire about a tribe of primitives known as the Mud People who magically become wealthy 1930s society nobs once they wander into an abandoned mansion.

The idea has merits but it is simplistically realized, trading more on the Zeitgeist of anti-establishmentarianism rather than any internal integrity, the essential flaw, all logic aside, is that beyond a flimsy typology, there is little to no connection between the primitives and their civilized equivalent (as there was in the reverse direction in, say, Lord Of The Flies, 1963). Certainly there is an indication here of the kind of subject that Merchant and Ivory would eventually triumph in but as high-end adapters of high-end literature. Satire was definitely not their strong suit

DVD Extras: High-definition digital transfer, enhanced for widescreen televisions; Insert booklet; Merchant Ivory's 1970 documentary, The Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization, a 53-minute film (both audio and video are low quality) about Indian scholar, Nirad Chaudhuri; Conversation with the Filmmakers featurette.

Available from: Shock Entertainment

 

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