book reports

Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing
Roger Crittenden
Boston: Focal Press, 2006.

A fine idea for a book, but it fails in the execution. Crittenden conducted several interviews with accomplished editors from France, Germany, Eastern Europe, the UK and the Nordic countries. Unhappily, not much is forthcoming. Large chunks of this biggish book are taken up with autobiography and discussions of editors’ personal lives, which suggest that even you have a more varied existence than these hard-working artisans. In their interchanges with Crittenden, clichés and vacuities abound. Editors must feel the rhythm of the story and edit according to that. (What rhythm is, exactly, we’re never told. Does anybody know?) European films are about psychology and mood, whereas American films are about stories and fast pace. (Tell that to Luc Besson, the brains behind the Astérix franchise, or the directors of our drearier indies.) Unsurprisingly, some editors prefer to use Avid, some don’t. Perhaps if Crittenden had pushed his interviewees to explain specific choices in particular scenes, we’d have less vaporous results. Better in this regard are the major interview books with editors, by Vincent LoBrutto (Selected Takes, 1991), Gabriella Oldham (First Cut, 1992), and Michael Ondaatje (The Conversations, 2002).

Presentation is sub-standard, with constant typographical errors (it’s is usually rendered its), botched translations, historical mistakes (“Griffiths” for Griffith, Gance as the inventor of tracking shots and parallel montage) and sheer bafflers (“the infraction of the story chronology”; “I have a few good souvenirs of adequate music”). The index deserves some sort of award for novelty. Most individuals are entered not by name but by their professions. So don’t look for Peckinpah under P but under D, for “Directors.” There are comparable entries for “Editors,” “Writers” (as in novelists), even “Philosophers” and, most cryptically, “Multi-personalities.” And don’t look for Peckinpah under P within the Directors category, either. Throughout, people are indexed alphabetically by their first names (Harvey Weinstein under H, Roger Crittenden under R). Was the manuscript copy-edited? Its hard to believe.

No collection lacks at least a few tidbits. Many editors stress the importance of cutting image in full awareness of what the sound will be, since in Europe one person often edits both tracks. Tony Lawson explains how a burst of violent movement can launch a stretch of varying slow-motion shots. I’m interested in Hollywood’s dependence on dialogue hooks, and I’m convinced that many art films consciously avoid them, so I was happy to learn that Maurice Pialat asked a prospective editor: “Do you like films in which the guy says ‘lets [sic] go to the sea,’ and the next scene is on the seashore?”

Ironically, in an enterprise that attempts to shine a spotlight on a neglected craft, what emerges is still stronger proof of the auteur theory. When the editors start to talk of directors with whom they’ve worked, things pick up. Agnès Guillemot on Godard and Truffaut, Roberto Perpignani on Bertolucci and the Tavianis, Lucia Zucchetti on Lynne Ramsay—in these passages and many more we find evidence that editors, in Europe no less than in America, afford creative input, but the director’s ideas and impulses usually hold sway.