Cinema- Concept & Practice

by Edward Dmytryk

  At the film’s action climax a formidably armed trio of antagonists have cornered the unarmed protagonist in an Amish bam. Since the Amish religious belief strictly forbids any form of violence, he is completely on his own. The three heavies separate to hunt down their prey but since the farm complex is small, so is the separation, and the three men are always within each other’s call. In order to avoid confusion the film shows only one confrontation at a time but, to make the prolonged and arbitrary separation believable, the editor resorted to a simple but clever expedient.

  As the first round of action approaches its climax, and at just about the time the viewer might begin to wonder at the absence of the first heavy’s buddies, a cut shows a second heavy making his way toward the noise of the conflict. But too late, of course. There are no surprises or obvious contradictions when the first heavy is promptly disposed of and the second appears on the scene to continue the action. The same expedient shows us the third heavy just before the second conflict is resolved, and the final sequence becomes a simple face-off which ends in a surprise denouement. During this entire portion of the film, adroit time management and the principle of isolation has enabled the film’s makers to present a thoroughly understandable story and action line.

  Clearly in this situation time could not have conformed to the needs of the sequence without the editor’s freedom to manipulate it. It must also be clear that it is difficult to discuss the problems or the nature of film without specific or implied reference to editing or the cutting room. The reason is obvious; it is impossible to make a motion picture without an editor, and almost everybody knows that except, strangely, a few theorists and a considerable body of filmmakers who “will not see.”

  Notes

  * From William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act DI, line 328.

  * Take it from the horse’s mouth. From 1923 to early 1929 the writer was a boy projectionist at Paramount Studio. Sound features arrived in 1928.

  * From Edward Dmytryk, On Filmmaking (Stoneham, MA: Focal Press, 1986).

  * It may be of interest to some film scholars to know that when Henry Fonda played a fictionalized version of Wyatt Earp in Warlock, his draw was so fast it had to be slowed down to make it perceptible.

  14

  The Force of Filmic Reality

  A film editor at work—the author at the cutting bench editing the Mae West film, Belle of the Nineties, for Paramount Pictures.

  A negative characteristic of the narrative film is simply this: It lacks the power of arbitrary recall or of impromptu timing. The viewer cannot stop the film at his pleasure to contemplate a reaction or savor a line, he cannot re-examine some earlier dialogue to clarify an ill-defined point. Nor can an actor time his performance by waiting out a possible laugh or gauge his audience’s response to a vital transition, since such responses will undoubtedly vary from neighborhood to neighborhood.

  Neither the writer, the director, nor the actor can with complete consistency anticipate the speed of the viewers’ reactions or the extent of their involvement—so that leaves it up to the cutter. Only the film editor has some limited freedom to regulate, or change completely, the film’s timing to accommodate the filmmaker and the viewer.

  The classification, Film Editor, is unquestionably the most ambiguous credit on the film crew list. (Only the writing credit Additional dialogue by can compete.) The creative editor may be the director, the producer, or, in the studios, possibly an executive editorial “expert,” but, at least on the few major films made each year, the director enjoys dominant control. However, with the exception of that handful of directors (all ex-cutters) who insist on handling their own films, the credited film editor does perform all the technical work required to execute the director’s wishes. A few of these under-acclaimed artists have, and sometimes are allowed to exhibit, creative editing talents which far surpass those of the directors they may work for (though I have never heard a director, no matter how dim his talent, admit that he is not one of the world’s greatest film editors). Unfortunately, only on rare occasions does one of these talented editors have final or full control.

  Henry Moore wrote, “It is, of course, the vision behind a work that matters most, not the material.” True. But unless the artist who furnishes that material edits his own film there can be more than one vision involved—or at the least, one vision which is not strictly pursued to the very end and another, more or less skewed, which is.

  Where there is a “king” there is often an ambitious “pretender,” and although the editor is usually the “director’s man,” he, too, has his own ideas and his own ego.* Given the opportunity and the cunning, the strong-minded creative cutter can, here and there, superimpose his own vision over that of the director. The change may not be great or obvious, and if a weak director is involved, it may be a blessing. But it can also be a curse. Many a final cut falls short of what it might have been, but because the director has no hands-on knowledge of editing, he is none the wiser. He will shake his head and wonder where he went wrong. Lucky is the non-cutting director who finds and clamps on to a top editor whose main desire is to see that the director’s film fulfills its potential, for there have been more films technically and artistically damaged in the cutting room than have been saved there.

  So now we come to the solid trunk of the film family tree. In the beginning, a flexible base carrying a film emulsion and the intermittent sprocket made moving pictures a reality, but moving pictures are not the same as “Film” or “The Cinema,” which reaches, at least occasionally, toward “Art.” And there was little possibility for art in narrative films before editing made aesthetic construction conceivable.

  Until the comparatively recent “renunciation of montage” by the sequence shot minimalists, there was broad agreement on the fundamental value of film editing. The great Russian director Pudovkin said, “Editing is the force of filmic reality.” Ernest Lindgren’s statement is even stronger: “The development of film technique has been primarily the development of film editing.” Much more recently, Kracauer wrote, “Of all the technical properties of film, the most general and indispensable is editing.” And even Bazin, who tried, without much success, to change the situation, originally agreed. “Editing,” he wrote, “had once been the very stuff of the cinema.” Perhaps his use of the past tense explains why the cinema is now so rarely good “stuff.”

  Almost everyone knows that a movie is a continuum, a nexus, consisting of innumerable pieces of film which those involved in its manufacture call shots, or cuts. These shots, some whose few frames make only a fleeting subliminal impression, others long enough to seem interminable, are cut and joined together by the film editor. But how does he join them together? What are his rules, his reasons, and his purposes? To be sure, he has the screenplay as a loose guide, he has the director’s casual, or precise and voluminous, suggestions, usually made during the running of the daily rushes, and he has his own ideas which are fed and modified by the input from the first two sources. But obviously, though not necessarily, there must be a great deal more to it than that.

  As early as 1929, hypotheses for editing films accompanied by sound were being formulated, tested, and dropped. I remember sitting in a darkened projection room just after the running of a newly cut sequence, listening to an artsy-craftsy film editor expound his theory of cutting sound films.

  “If I can just lean back in my seat with my eyes closed and hear the splices go by,” here he snapped his fingers rhythmically, “blip, blip, blip—I’ll know the film has been perfectly cut.”

  It seems strange that in this modem period, when the sequence shot is scrambling for a place in the film sun, the cult of the “short cut” should be as healthy as it is. This “theory” holds that any cut held too long is a bore. Of course, at times that could be true, but the quality of the shot, Moore’s “vision,” is not included in the formula. Cutters of this elementary school are talking about cuts lasting four or five seconds, sometimes a little more. Many
films of recent years have been “chopped to death,” with shots abandoned before the completion of important reactions, and cuts dropped before key arguments have been fully made. Cutters brag of setting new records for the number of cuts in a reel. The concept behind this style (?) seems to be that the average viewer is interested mainly in the composition of the shot and only peripherally in its substance, that he has a short attention span and must frequently be given new pictures to look at or boredom will set in. It is most fortunate that not a single one of the world’s top film editors subscribes to this aberration.

  There are a number of aspects of filmmaking which fall under the jurisdiction of the film editor. First, to a greater extent than is realized by many directors, he is the author of a large portion of the film’s syntax. (Think about that!) Syntax treats of the proper order of message-bearing units (images or lines of dialogue) to render the narrative more understandable (and more interesting). It is, of course, a necessary basis for all communication, and it is amenable to a great deal of manipulation, manipulation which, in literature, for instance, accounts for the differences between a Hemingway, a Melville, and a Faulkner. But film syntax is capable of even greater variations than literature, since its “words” and “rules of grammar” are not nearly as well defined or codified.

  Second, Eisenstein has written, “Two film pieces of any kind, placed together, inevitably combine into a new concept, a new quality, arising out of the juxtaposition.” If that statement is true—and though a good many people fear it, not too many will question it— the editor carries a heavy load. Since it is he who is responsible for at least the mechanical aspect of every juxtaposition, each of which delivers “a new concept, a new quality,” he must be very careful that the juxtaposition he chooses is the most favorable, the most eloquent, in developing the dramatic elements he works with, and the most accurately made, since every frame added or subtracted from the juxtaposition alters its values. (I refer here to the creative editor who takes his responsibilities seriously. Many cutters simply put selected shots together and let it go at that. But who said the world is perfect?)

  Eisenstein’s pronouncement does not say that every juxtaposition of two pieces of film is profitable, only new—but the new concept might be deceptive, the new quality regressive, and the editor is faced with a decision. While each piece of film has its own meaning, its juxtaposition to another piece of film alters, extends, contradicts, diminishes, or enlarges that meaning. The result is the formation of a new or, more commonly, a modified interpretation of the cut. Since the viewer assumes that a cut, or a related combination of cuts, carries a message, the editor must be certain that each new juxtaposition carries the desired message, not an accidental one. (In editing, serendipity is rare.)

  To be sure, the greatest part of such a burden should have been eliminated during production, but not all directors are maestros, and awkward conjunctions, unanticipated on the set, are not unusual. Careless shooting is too common on many films. And for a number of legitimate reasons films are always shot out of sequence; no matter how conscientiously the director, the actors, and the script supervisor monitor the scenes, slipups in the consistency of mood and tempo are bound to surface. Even masterpieces will suffer a glitch or two.* Which is why a good editor is rarely unemployed. The final tailoring, the smoothing out of juxtapositions whose junctions are “out of sync” is in his hands. The truth is that the most creative filmmakers are inclined to gamble, to guess, and if an occasional guess is wide of the mark, the first corrective move is a try for a miracle in the cutting room.

  Juxtaposition is only one of the editor’s many problems. The selection of the shots which will be joined together, one after another, until the sequence at work is completed, comes first. The logical questions then are, What are the requirements for choosing a shot? and Why is one cut preferred over another for any part of a scene?

  It has already been noted (page 129) that the director may have indicated his choice of angle and performance (good actors rarely play a scene exactly the same in different takes or set-ups). And unless, for some unexpected reason such as impossible matching, the director’s choice will not “work,” the editor will follow his wishes if they have been clearly articulated. As for the rest, which is usually a major portion of the day’s rushes, the editor is the final decision maker, at least through the first cut. And though some might think that the scenes as shot are so specific as to negate the possibility of playing around, the everyday experience of the cutting room demolishes that notion.

  Ideally, the editor’s perceptions of a scene’s values should match those of the director. But at times, if he is very clever and sufficiently alert, he may come up with more because, every now and then, close scrutiny of a newly edited sequence will uncover an unexpected nuance, or suggest an interesting twist in the scene’s development. Bonuses will arise from a surprisingly original performance, or from a fresh slant on characters that surfaces only after juxtapositions have been made. But it all starts before a single cut has been considered.

  After the first or second running of the dailies, many cutters take the film directly to the Moviola or the flat-bed, but when a complex sequence is involved this is not the procedure of choice. Since the images on either of these machines are too small to deliver an exact focus of attention, the editor with a disposition for thorough analysis may look at his rushes repeatedly to fix the significant details— transitions, key reactions, performance, and occasionally pictorial effects—firmly in his mind. And though he uses the Moviola to locate the exact frames for his cut, he will have made his cutting decisions on the basis of what he saw on the “big screen,” because the messages seen there are the only ones to be seen later by the viewer.

  From the very first cut, which may be a long shot to establish the milieu or a close-up to introduce a character, the editor selects cuts which, at least in his opinion, say what the sequence at any particular point should be saying. There will be occasional compromises as when, for example, a performance in a selected close-up is not as effective as that given in a tight group. Here, the editor must decide whether more is to be gained from the closeness, the search of the actor’s eyes, or from the slightly superior playing in a somewhat longer shot.

  Although a few set-ups may be shot for “protection,” most will have been created for a specific purpose, and each will be sought out and used with that purpose in mind. So the next question is: How long should each shot run? The answer is remarkably simple: It should run as long as it is the best cut for delivering the immediate message, whether that is six frames or one thousand feet—but not one frame longer. When another shot says it better it should instantly replace its predecessor.

  However, within that general rule there are necessary variations; the length of the cut will also depend on the nature and character of the information it must convey. Every juxtaposition may “combine into a new concept, a new quality,” but that is hardly a good reason for rushing on to the next splice. As a rule the viewer is not aware of a well-made juxtaposition, and the screen image, whether beautifully or badly shot, tells him a great deal more. Now we’re talking a universal language. The image delivers its message, good or bad, pleasant or repulsive, touching or insensitive, and the viewer’s acceptance of the cut’s implications is controlled to a large extent by the time allowed for its contemplation. In other words, the strength and the depth of a character’s reaction to a spoken thought or a physical deed is determined by the nature of the stimulus, and the time required for understanding that stimulus will vary with each viewer’s intelligence and quickness of wit. Most of the time the difference will be very slight and can be ignored. But if the stimulus is complex or profound the reaction cut should be long enough to ensure the decipherment of the stimulus and the resultant reaction. Now the time difference in viewer understanding may be measurable, and since the editor can’t please everyone he will time his cut to accommodate the slower mind. The increase in length will probably
not be too great but in extreme cases, if the filmmaker has been lucky or wise enough to cast the best, the editor will have little to concern him. A Jack Lemmon or a Diane Keaton can keep an extended cut alive for even the quickest mind.

  In short, cutting demands are imposed by the story, the attendant situation, the complexity of the particular sequence, the characters, the mood, and the pace, not by some esoteric theory. A bravura sequence shot such as the opening of A Touch of Evil, perfectly serves its chief purpose, that of showing off the director’s conceptual skill (we have all succumbed to the temptation, and for the same reason) but its construction and execution is really a triumph for the crew, especially the cameraman and the grips. As a shot of substance it is probably 5 on a scale of 10. Close analysis uncovers several spots which would have been better served by more specific set-ups.

  Even in the field of routine films where plagiarism is the rule, no two sequences are quite alike; they are as different as snowflakes and fingerprints. And no specific equation can be devised to handle all the variables. Only a general rule can approach validity, and its very generality invites increased diversity. Although two editors would undoubtedly differ somewhat in their value judgments when cutting identical material, they would probably agree within a frame or two where each cut should begin and where it should end, regardless of the differences in editing. The same could never be said for the average director and his editor. Here is where an instinct for optimum pacing asserts itself. A few frames too many at the start of a cut, a few frames left dangling at the end, multiplied by the number of juxtapositions in the film, will lead to a hesitant and lagging pace. Such a lapse may last only a fraction of a second, and even a good director will find it difficult to isolate the problem, but only a few editors have an instinct for the precise frame which does not overstay its welcome for even a fifth of a second. And only one film in a hundred shows the mark of such sensitive editing.*