[3] Narrated by Willem Dafoe, the Documentary features interviews with Jack Garfein, Irène Jacob, Peter Bogdanovich, Foster Hirsch and several other artists.
Its structure mixes between the narration of Garfein’s youth in the concentration camps and his later career in the 50s Hollywood where he became a key Actors Studio figure and director of two films, The Strange One (1957) and Something Wild (1961), before disappearing from the public eye.
He achieved precocious success—evolving into a Broadway prodigy, Hollywood’s new promising director, the protégé of Lee Strasberg, friend and collaborator of Elia Kazan, and later on Marilyn Monroe, he developed his own technique of acting "as a survival mechanism" that was rooted in his experience of having "learned to act" to survive the concentration camps—later creating with Paul Newman the Hollywood branch of the Actors Studio, becoming there a mentor to many actors.
[7] The Strange One’s depiction of a fatal hazing incident and its subsequent coverup, and Something Wild’s focus on the brutal rape and psychological breakdown of a teenage girl, echoed his traumas as a Holocaust survivor in a postwar landscape.
[8] Garfein produced works that resonated with an avant-garde lucidity in their political subtext and commentary on conservative 1950s America, confronting and exposing issues of racial segregation, sexual violence, and military fascism.
"[25] The film was qualified as "A Magnificent Documentary Where Life And Craft Resound Social Justice Consciousness" by Chiara Spagnoli for Cinema Daily US;[26] as "An engrossing and intimate portrait.."[27] by Dennis Hartley in DIGBY'S BLOG or "Fascinating."
[29] Brent Simon wrote for the Golden Globe Awards, "Director Tessa Louise-Salomé’s artful new documentary The Wild One […] lovingly illuminates this loquacious but still somewhat enigmatic artist…".