(Los Angeles) Shortening an actor’s pout, oppressing the viewer by quickly linking shots, punctuating the plot with an ellipse: in the shadow of the directors, editors play a vital role in bringing a film to life, which proves crucial in the race for the Oscars.
“There can’t be a good film with bad editing,” Kevin Tent, who assisted Alexander Payne on his comedy, told AFP. Winter Breakhonored with five nominations.
A privileged collaborator of the filmmaker for almost 30 years, this editor compares his job to that of a “chef”.
After filming, “you get all these different elements, and you chop things up and mix them together” to find the best alchemy in the arrangement of the images, he summarizes. “If you put too much salt, it’s not good, or if you put too much sugar, it ruins everything. »
The recipe for Winter Break gained support. Alexander Payne writes a touching Christmas tale about the loneliness of three lost souls – a psycho-rigid history teacher, a grieving cook and a fragile teenager – forced to spend New Year’s Eve together in a posh American high school in the 1970s.
Selected in the best editing category, the comedy is one of the favorite’s important rivals Oppenheimer for the Oscar for best film. Because these two awards are very correlated in Hollywood.
For almost a century, only 11 feature films have won the Best Film statuette without being nominated for Best Editing. And 40% of the winners of the supreme award also won the technical trophy.
Complicity with the director
A prize list which underlines the extent to which editing constitutes the very essence of cinema. More than the script or the filming, great directors like Stanley Kubrick or Orson Welles held this technical stage as the key to making a film.
“Films are made in the editing room,” continues Mr. Tent. “That’s where you really have time to be creative and think about what the film is. »
The editor refined the images of Winter Break for almost a year with Alexander Payne.
Enough to allow the duo to cut more than 30 minutes from their first draft, and find the right tone by testing the intermediate versions thanks to screenings in small groups.
The comedy was particularly praised for its subtle use of fading – an overlapping of images that gradually reveals one shot while the previous one fades – used to contemplate the emotional evolution of the characters or to make winter languor palpable.
This work requires great complicity between director and editor: many filmmakers have an assigned technician, whom they keep from film to film.
PHOTO ANGELA WEISS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Director Martin Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker who worked on Killers of the Flower Moon.
Queen of the profession with three Oscars, editor Thelma Schoonmaker has followed Martin Scorsese since the start of his career, more than 50 years ago.
Nominated for Killers of the Flower Moon – which also competes for best film – she regularly highlights their symbiosis.
“He taught me everything I know about editing,” she told the website CineMontage in February. “We have the same sensitivity. »
Cinema “midwives”
PHOTO GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Editor Laurent Sénéchal supported director Justine Triet on Anatomy of a fallanother contender for the double best film and best editing.
Artisans of cinema, editors are recognized for their know-how, without developing a particular touch, because the vision of the filmmaker takes precedence.
“The editing must not be visible, signed, it is a job of adaptation,” tells AFP Laurent Sénéchal, who supported Justine Triet on Anatomy of a fallanother contender for the double best film and best editing.
“We are like midwives, we accompany,” adds the man who collaborated on the director’s last three films.
For this legal thriller, which dissects the collapse of a couple through the trial of a writer accused of the murder of her husband, editing required “38 weeks”, or more than eight months. “A luxury” in French cinema, according to Mr. Sénéchal.
This time notably allowed the duo to refine the sound-image desynchronization, essential for the ambiguity of the film.
When the couple’s child testifies in court, the viewer discovers, for example, images of the husband, who speaks with the voice of his son: is this a lived past or fabricated memories?
“Justine is completely obsessive,” confides the technician. For her, “editing is one of the most essential places for directing. »