After the devastating news of Sally Menke's death last week, I read some moving and heartfelt tributes to her... and yet, some of them didn't seem to understand what an editor actually does, or what made Menke's work in particular so remarkable.
I suppose just about anybody could string together a rough assembly of a movie. All you have to do is follow the script and put things in the right order, as Sir Edwin, the great Shakespearean actor played by John Cleese, said of words in a play: "Old Peter Hall used to say to me, 'They're all there Eddie, now we've got to get them in the right order.'"
Of course, there are some basic grammatical guidelines it would be wise to take into consideration -- things like the 30-degree rule, and of course the good ol' 180-degree rule (Sir Edwin again: "And, er, for example, you can also say one word louder than another -- er, 'To be or not to be,' or 'To be or not to be,' or 'To be or not to be' you see?").
Well, an editor does the same thing, making decisions (usually in close consultation with the director and possibly other bigwigs on the production) about what to emphasize and how to do so. Do we need a master shot? Should we use a close-up here? How long should we hold on her face? At what point do we want to use the angle where he's behind her, so we can see both faces but they can't see each other's? And so on.
Menke said she learned from watching the work of Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, "how to collapse time in action but still push a character through a scene." Those kinds of choices -- assuming the director has given her good material to work with -- may not be obvious, but they are marks of skill and artistry.
So, let's just state for the record that editing is not simply a matter of making the movie shorter, or of performing the greatest number of cuts. When there are cuts that you notice -- inserts, cutaways -- that's not necessarily "good editing." And a movie structured with flashbacks or flash-forwards (like "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction") is probably that way because it was written that way, not because the editor decided to jumble things up a bit. After all, a cut is a cut. It can stay in the present-tense, preserving continuity with a scene, or jump to the other side of the world and into the future or the past -- one isn't necessarily any more difficult to accomplish than the other. (Actually, it's probably tougher to stay locked into the present -- you have fewer options for playing with time, expanding or contracting it within a single scene.)
I've chosen to go through parts of two scenes from "Inglourious Basterds" in the video piece above, using brief subtitles to point out some of the things that are going on in the cutting between shots. But you can only cram so much into titles, so let me summarize:
I took my cues from Menke herself, in the Observer article many have quoted, using the opening of the film ("It's all about tension, so you follow the emotional arc of a character through a scene, even if, as in the opening of Inglourious Basterds, they're just pouring a glass of milk or stuffing their pipe,") and the montage to David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)" that kicks off the big Nazi movie premiere ("Oddly, I don't cut to music. I just make the scene work emotionally and dramatically, and then Quentin will come in and lay the track over it and we'll tweak it to the beats.")
The piece begins with a short clip from Josef von Sternberg's 1931 "Dishonored" starring Marlene Dietrich, which is where some of the iconography in the montage sequence comes from. Notice, too, the way Sternberg's cutting tracks lines of sight across space. (Tarantino said he had fallen in love with Sternberg's films around the time he was making "Inglourious Basterds.") Also, I wanted to show how, as Menke said, the cuts do not come regularly on the beat, but are "tweaked" to highlight particular, carefully selected movements that synch with the music's rhythm.
In the farmhouse scene (in which Col. Landa takes that long, sickening drink of milk), I wanted to show how cutting around looks exchanged by Landa, LaPadite and his daughter Charlotte develop tension and "push the characters" through the scene. We don't know exactly what's going on, but we know there's more to it than what is being explicitly said or done.
Also, each of these sections of "Inglourious Basterds" is built around a long, climactic take, which changes up the rhythm of the scene. (David Bordwell has pointed out that the Average Shot Length of a Tarantino film tends to be longer than those of most contemporary filmmakers.) Of course, these shots were designed to be seen intact (they're clearly directed that way), but they also serve as reminders that good editors know when not to cut.
And so, in honor and fond remembrance of Sally Menke...
11 Comments
Jim, thanks so much for this wonderful post, and for your earlier Menke post. I was particularly saddened to hear of her death, more than most filmmaker deaths I hear about. A great craftsman who just last year was crucially involved in the most thrilling film of the year...thanks for giving the room to mourn and remember together.
wow... this is truly a fitting tribute not just to ms menke but to all film editors, the professionals who, more than anyone, are the invisible wizards behind a film...
Wow, thanks so much for posting that. Your probably the only post I've read that seems to understand what she did as an editor. Since she's died I've been watching one of her movies a night and really studying them in ways I've never done before. She truly was one, and because of her movies, will remain, one of our best.
Jim, Jim, Jim, THIS is why I read you. Because you make formalism not just accessible but fascinating.
A marvelous tribute and a very informative article, Jim.
I was devastated as well when I heard the news. And the way she went depresses me even more.
Rest in Peace.
I can't imagine the level of intuition it takes for an editor to predict where the camera should settle at every moment (and for what duration) so that the audience connects just enough, comprehends without overt signaling, and experiences emotional resonance without feeling manipulated. Genius.
I am one of those who is fairly unfamiliar with what an editor does. But as a lover of cinema and a great admirer of Tarantino's work, I am sharing this tribute/lesson/analysis with my friends and family. It drives home what a loss Menke's death is. Thank you.
Outstanding tribute, Jim. I can see the love, appreciation, caring, and generosity in sharing your presentation. The art is real... I'd like to believe Sally Menke is smiling in delight.
To both Sally and to Jim, I say, "Bravo."
One of the most important things that is achieved through cutting is the overall tone of a sequence, say if the scene is masculine in nature, or feminine. The script can only supply what the scene should feel like, but at the end of the day, it is the material that ought to be shaped that way. Sculpted, one could say.
I remember watching Bryan Singer's Valkyrie and Johnnie To's Sparrow roughly at the same time, and it is amazing how a rough, blunt cut evokes the overt masculine feel of the former, and the soft rhythmic cuts (in addition to the dancing camerawork) evokes a feminine feel (though To is a master masculine figure, and Sparrow is a conscious departure). I mean, one could almost feel a shape there.
One of the best examples of rhythm creation in recent memory is the opening of Up in the Air, where we're swiftly introduced to Clooney's lifestyle. It is nimble, it is music, it is silken, it is suave, it is smooth and that is why it makes a point. I mean, editing is everything, no? I mean, almost..
One thing that becomes clear while watching the first clip with your annotations is that great editing always seems in rhythm to the music, even if it isn't cut to the beats of the music.
I'm glad that Menke was so proud of the milk drinking scene. It's rare, in my opinion, that one can appreciate the editing of a scene the first time through without being pulled outside of the scene's power. That would be the exception.
Thank goodness for blogs and for amateur-friendly video editing software. Menke's name might have just been a name in an obit otherwise. Thanks for properly celebrating her craft.
Jim,
Nice piece.
Good film editors have an innate talent.
You can teach editing techniques but applying them is an art. Scorsese was once complimented on a series of shots in one of his films, "that wasn't written, it was created in the cutting room".
Pulp Fiction is one of the few 'original' pieces of film making since the 60s but in the hands of the wrong editor could have been a lesser movie.
Many of the best directors learnt their trade in the cutting room. Scorsese himself was an assistant film editor on the documentary, ‘Woodstock’. That is where he met Thelma.
What is not often mentioned is that film editors prefer to work alone. Often they will cut a film without the director being in the cutting room and make creative decisions about narrative and pace.
Everyone in the industry knows the one absolute rule in film making:
all films are made in the cutting room.
Ron Taylor (BBC film editor)
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