The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

The documentary describes what editing is. It starts in the silent era; how the first cuts were made and how audiences learned to read them. Soviet montage theory is described and an experiment recounted: the same face joined with different images and audiences reading different feelings. Then come the studio period, the rise in cutting speed and the move to digital. The film uses examples from a great many pictures and shows different cutting options for the same scene. Wendy Apple directs. Kathy Bates narrates. Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Walter Murch and many editors speak. It was made with the support of the American editors' guild. The matter it treats is that editing is invisible; good editing goes unnoticed, and that is a problem for the profession. The documentary touches on the early period when most editors were women and describes the reasons. Walter Murch's sections are its most technical side; the relation between sound and image is taken up directly. It also discusses the consequences of the move to digital; the options multiply and the process of deciding changes. The narrative is built on examples and the theory is given in reduced form. Its limit is scope; it runs short and many subjects stay shallow. Who it is for: anyone curious about film technique and how films are made. Who it is not for: it is shallow, centred on Hollywood, and fast for anyone unfamiliar.