(and as a wealthy man, despite the 1929 recession, Savitry did not need the proceeds of success);[5] Barbara Creed notes that "The Surrealists saw travel as a means to achieve a state of dépaysement ";[6] while another factor may have been the disagreements between the Surrealists over their association with Communism, which reached a climax with André Breton's letter of provocation to the group, and meeting with them on 11 March 1929, on the issue of working collectively, to which idea Savitry was amongst the majority of the group in responding positively, innocently naming the reluctant, and soon to be expelled, Desnos as a desirable collaborator .
[9] Friedrich W. Murnau, in the middle of shooting his ill-fated movie Tabou, was impressed by Savitry's boat picture and engaged him on his team to research Polynesian iconography and to make film stills.
He is best known for his portraits of mid-century personalities, many of whom were close friends: actors Anouk Aimée, Brigitte Bardot, Pierre Brasseur, Madeleine Renaud, Serge Reggiani and Charlie Chaplin, film directors Jacques Prévert and Marcel Carné, sculptors Alberto Giacometti, Victor Brauner and Oscar Dominiguez, Marcel Jean, Bertold Bartosch, Pierre Loeb, musicians Django Reinhardt, Claude Luter, Édith Piaf, writer Colette, trans* sculptor Anton Prinner, and Surrealist painter Germain Vandersteen.
In 1947 he moves to Belle Île to be on the set of Carné's La Fleur de l'âge,[13] making a famous image of Anouk Aimée holding a kitten.
He contributed the only painting unsold from his 1929 Zborowski show La lumiére du gaz arrivant dans les ruines to the exhibition 'Le Surréalisme: Sources, Histoire, Affinités' at Charpentier Gallery, Paris, in 1964.