Fine Cuts: Interviews on the Practice of European Film Editing
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Fine Cuts In the expanded second edition of Fine Cuts , Roger Crittenden reveals the experiences of the greatest European fi lm editors through his warm and perceptive interviews. This new edition builds on the foundations laid out in 2005, including interviews with the editors of fi lms such as Day for Night , The Sacrifi ce , The Kid with a Bike , and Fanny and Alexander ; new interviews with editors of such fi lms as Tyrannosaur and The Other Side of Hope ; and editors from a wider range of countries, including Austria, Belgium, Finland, Portugal, and Russia. The book now embraces all aspects of post-production, with insights into sound editing from Larry Sider , originator of the renowned School of Sound, and music composition from Oscar winner Dario Marianelli ( Atonement ). Editors relate their experiences with directors, including: • Claire Atherton [Chantal Akerman] • Mick Audsley [Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears] • Yann Dedet [François Truffaut, Claire Denis, Maurice Pialat] • Marie-Hélène Dozo [Dardenne Brothers] • François Gédigier [Patrice Chéreau, Lars von Trier] • Samu Heikkilä [Aki Kaurismäki] • Sylvia Ingemarsdotter [Ingmar Bergman] • Tony Lawson [Nicolas Roeg, Stanley Kubrick, Neil Jordan] • Michal Leszczylowski [Andrei Tarkovsky, Lukas Moodysson] • Roberto Perpignani [Orson Welles, Bernardo Bertolucci, Taviani Brothers] • Mary Stephen [Eric Rohmer] Each interview also includes a list of cited and notable fi lms for further study. An online eResource contains additional interviews with editors Sabine Mamou, Agnès Guillemot, and Nino Baragli. After a distinguished career at the BBC, Roger Crittenden was recruited to the new National Film and Television School as Head of Editing and later became Director of the MA program. While with the NFTS, he taught in Moscow, Mexico City, Manila, Copenhagen, Singapore, Brisbane Australia, and in Cuba. In 2014 he was given the fi rst ever CILECT International Teaching Award for his outstanding contribution to media pedagogy. More recently, he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Film at Griffi th University in Brisbane, Australia. Roger is the author of two books on editing, as well as a book on Truffaut’s Day For Night for the British Film Institute’s Film Classic Series. Fine Cuts Interviews on the Practice of European Film Editing Second Edition Roger Crittenden Second edition published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Roger Crittenden to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Focal Press 2006 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Crittenden, Roger. Title: Fine cuts : interviews on the practice of European fi lm editing / Roger Crittenden. Description: Second edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes index. Identifi ers: LCCN 2018004375 | ISBN 9781138201989 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138201996 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315475134 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture editors—Europe—Interviews. | Motion pictures—Editing. Classifi cation: LCC TR849.A1 C73 2018 | DDC 778.535092/2 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004375 ISBN: 978-1-138-20198-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-20199-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-47513-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgements vii Foreword to First Edition: Walter Murch —The Transformation of Chance into Destiny viii Introduction 1 1 Yann Dedet 8 2 Mary Stephen 19 3 François Gédigier 27 4 Claire Atherton 36 5 Marie-Hélène Dozo 54 6 Katharina Wartena 60 7 Roberto Perpignani 67 8 Simona Paggi 84 9 Julia Juaniz 97 10 João Braz 109 11 Juliane Lorenz 115 12 Karina Ressler 126 13 Samu Heikkilä 131 14 Sylvia Ingemarsdotter 141 vi Contents 15 Michal Leszczylowski 152 16 Olga Grinshpun 163 17 Tony Lawson 167 18 Jonathan Morris 182 19 Mike Ellis 197 20 Mick Audsley 211 21 Pia Di Ciaula 225 22 Lucia Zucchetti 239 23 David Charap 251 24 Larry Sider 258 25 Dario Marianelli 276 26 Dave King 292 Index 304 Acknowledgements I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all contributors, new and old, for their generosity in being part of this venture. I am especially grateful to Tatiana Tursunova-Tlatov, Head of International Relations at VGIK, the Russian Film School, for sending me images and information relating to Esther Tobak, and for arranging and translating the interview with Olga Grinsphun; to Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts of A Nos Amours for introducing me to Claire Atherton, and to Claire herself for her hospitality in Paris; to my old friend Yann Dedet for encouraging me to contact Katharina Wartena, and letting me see the fi lm she made about him at work; to another old friend Sylvia Ingemarsdotter for sourcing the text of the encounter between Ingmar Bergman, herself, and Swedish Film Editors, and for arranging a translation by Axel Grigor: to my newer friend Luis Zeferino for suggesting João Braz; to Paul Seed for his generous tribute to, and photographs of, Dave King; to Mick Audsley, Johnathan Morris, and Dario Marianelli for their individual hospitality; to Larry Sider for his crucial contribution; and to Walter Murch, who has kindly allowed his original foreword to be reprinted. I have taken the opportunity afforded by this second edition to represent both sound editing and music composition. The editors I have added cover television as well as cinema, documentary alongside fi ction, and a more eclectic range of form and content. In response to feedback I have included suggestions for fi lms to view. The fi lms relate both to the work of the individual and to the fi lms and fi lmmakers whom they admire. I dedicate this edition to the memory of Dave King. He was the best of friends, and his memories are a perfect conclusion to the book. Note As with the fi rst edition, each response has depended upon the nature of our communication. While consider- able editing has been necessary, I have avoided molding them into a mono form, preferring to present them as they have been submitted to me. This means that they vary from the transcript of a face-to-face encounter, to the result of extensive correspondence, to a personal statement . Foreword to First Edition The Transformation of Chance into Destiny Film is the only art whose birthday is known to us. —Béla Balázs The motion picture was born in Edison’s New Jersey laboratory in 1889 and spent an innocent childhood at fairground sideshows around the world, amusing and astonishing audiences with its one trick—single-shot representations of events like The Sneeze , The Kiss , Train Arriving at the Station , and Workers Leaving the Factory . Then around 1903, at age fourteen, it unexpect- edly discovered the intoxicating and almost sexual power of montage. What emerged out of this adolescence, as a butterfl y out of its chrysalis, was cinema. The construction of a coherent and emotional story from discontinuous and sometimes confl icting images is the fruitful paradox that lies at the heart of the equation: MOTION PICTURES + MONTAGE = CINEMA. We have the testimony of Edison and the Lumière brothers, American and European inventors of the mechanisms that made motion pictures possible, but the voices of those who invented the art of montage, which made cinema possible, are long lost. And they were largely European, anticipating developments in America by a couple of years. How did G.A. Smith, in 1900, arrive upon the idea of the close-up in Grandma’s Reading Glass ? Or James Williamson, in 1901, the idea of action continu- ity across various locations in Fire! ? We simply don’t know. How were these basic ideas elaborated and refi ned by Meliès, Mottershaw, Haggard, Porter, and others? There are some interviews with the American director D.W. Griffi th, and the books on theory written years later by Russian directors Eisenstein and Pudovkin. But as for what actually took place in the editorial trenches in the fi rst two decades of the 20th century, we have only the most fragmentary circumstantial evidence, and in 1924 Balázs was already mourning the lost opportunity. ‘It was the fi rst chance to observe, with the naked eye so to speak, one of the rarest phenomena in the history of culture: the emergence of a new form of artistic expression. But we let the opportunity pass.’ All the other crafts of fi lm—acting, photography, painting, dramaturgy, architecture, music, cos- tume, make-up, dance—are based on long-established arts, with roots extending down through millennia of development and tradition, deep into the fecund secrets of humanity’s prehistory. But the defi ning craft of cinema—montage—seems to have quickly invented itself in a cocoon of silence, and to have continued that reticence as part of its protective colouration. Perhaps this is due to the personality of fi lm editors themselves, or to the nature of their role as seconds to forceful Foreword to First Edition ix and articulate directors. Or perhaps it is due to the work itself, which most often aspires to burnish the efforts of others and to remain itself unnoticed.