Valerie Orpen,
Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive.
London and New York: Wallflower. 2003.
ISBN: 1 903364 53 1
UK£12.99 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Wallflower Press)
Claude Chabrol apparently once observed: “Scriptwriting is like cooking. Shooting the part I like the most is like eating. Editing is therefore, well, the washing-up.” Thus the elusive status of this neglected craft is where Orpen begins her study of film editing as rhetoric. She sets out to debunk assumptions that the process is routine or mechanical, affirming its expressive potential which, she acknowledges, is scarcely a radical viewpoint. Her proposition that, as rhetoric, editing persuades, influences and pleases as well as its connective function, has several strands: that classical Hollywood continuity editing is not always seamless but is often expressive in ways different from those we commonly associate with experimental cinema; that editing contributes to and enhances performance in a variety of ways; that editing is context specific and should be studied in relation to scenes and sequences not cuts; and most importantly that montage and mise en scene are not oppositional but complementary. These strands are developed through detailed textual analysis of selected scenes from across a range of cinema styles and genres. The result is a carefully nuanced and rigorously argued commentary on the possibilities and scope of expressive editing.
After exploring the origins and semantics of editing as montage or decoupage, with the different emphases these place on cutting or joining, and on fragmentation versus the whole, chapter one looks at continuity editing in Hollywood through close readings of selected scenes from Rear Window (US, 1954) and Raging Bull (US, 1980), films both rich with existing commentary upon which Orpen builds. The predominant figures of rhetoric that Orpen identifies and explores in Rear Window are repetition and alternation. Her analysis of Hitchcock and Tomasini’s editing finds “complex almost subliminal, editing patterns” which she suggests defy “the notion that rhetorical figures are intended to be easily recognized by the audience” (20). The shot by shot analysis here gives detailed elaboration on and substantiation of the claim that continuity editing can also be expressive. Her analysis of point of view (POV) editing in Rear Window leads into a discussion of character identification where, detailing the choices of shot scale and subject, she notes the significance of shifting emphases in viewpoints, which also shed light on character interiority. Here she challenges the Kuleshov effect, which Hitchcock believed he had updated in Rear Window . Kuleshov’s fabled film experiment, whereby the same expressionless close-up of an actor’s face was juxtaposed alongside a bowl of soup, a child playing with a doll and a woman in a coffin, reportedly left the audience amazed by the virtuosity of the actor, Mosjoukine. Orpen argues for the reverse of this; that “emotion begets an idea” (31) and that the Kuleshov effect neglects the expressive potential of sound and fails to credit the value of performance or of camera angle, framing and lighting in the construction of meaning. Expressive editing, she argues, works with mise en scene, not in contradistinction to it, as past debates contended.
Moving from classical Hollywood conventions to new Hollywood editing, her analysis of Raging Bull reflects on how the film’s editing, which “occasionally verges on the ‘bad’, incorporating jump cuts and crossing of the axis” (43), was nevertheless rewarded by the Hollywood establishment; for despite its seemingly radical approach, the editing demonstrates “alternation”, considered a pivotal axiom of classical Hollywood cinema (44). Orpen’s textual analysis reveals alternation here goes beyond shot/reverse conventions and is visible “between scenes, sequences, sound tracks, graphics, speeds and … camera movement and stasis” (44). In close study of the scene depicting the second time Jake (the film’s central protagonist), notices Lisa (his wife to be), Orpen details how the editing “expresses both the spatial and symbolic distance” (47) between their different worlds and perceptions, alternating between static shots of Jake and slow motion, moving shots of Lisa which evoke Jake’s elevation of her to movie star status. In studying “the effects of cutting between shots of varying focus” and of concertina cutting on a subject, rather than following the 30˚ rule or cutting back to the speaker or listener, Orpen outlines how expressive editing “subtly contributes to an overall rhetoric of repetition and alternation” (59). New Hollywood editing, she argues is not so new after all, for editors have always been inclined to cheat for “emphatic or expressive purposes”(59). What has changed is audience awareness and film literacy, which now allows such strategies to be more visible.
Chapter two considers the different kinds of expressive editing applied in avant garde cinema through analysis of Godard’s À Bout de souffle (France, 1959) where jump cuts and line crosses are employed to create ambiguity and to shock but not necessarily for any apparent narrative purpose. Numerous motives are identified for Godard’s jump cuts, which at times accelerate the pace of the film but at other times serve to ridicule characters and conventions, creating “distanciation and alienation” (84) for the viewer who is forced to participate “to bring the film to life” (64). More significant here, perhaps, is Orpen’s observation of alternation between jump cuts and long takes, a hallmark of the New Wave ethos, which mocked the conventions of cinema du papa , and which here echoes the “actes gratuits” (85) of the film’s chief protagonist, Michel. Orpen’s discussion of Godard’s tour de force ends with a salute, that despite endless copying À Bout de souffle ‘s shock valueendures.
The role of editing in the articulation of character, performance and star image provides the focus of chapter three. Drawing attention to the part played by sound editing Orpen argues that dialogue editing techniques aided the blossoming of the star system by enhancing the distinctiveness of stars’ voices. In her study of a scene from Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not (US, 1945) she notes the impact of Lauren Bacall’s disembodied husky voice in her screen entrance (also her screen debut), as Frenchy, and how editing choices maintain the distance and thus the suspense between the characters, with emotional tension building as takes get shorter in the crosscutting that follows. Here, too, she notes the shifting gender of the gaze: “reaction shots are not necessarily male and male stars can be the object of female gazes” (99). The part editing plays in the identification of stars as “faces” (Greta Garbo) or “bodies” (James Cagney, James Dean) (86) is also discussed here in a revealing comparison to the way that character actors are edited. “Bodies” Orpen argues, “are the object of reaction shots, whereas character actors are not, or not to the same extent” (100). Noting that stars, in comparison, tend to slow the narrative, she goes on to explore how feminist filmmakers, Marguerite Duras and Chantal Akerman, bring a different treatment to the star by avoiding cuts and privileging activity. In Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Belgium/France, 1975), Orpen notes that housewifely tasks are filmed in long, static takes that appear as real time, dubbed “women’s time” by some. Expressing the protagonist’s displacement, the long takes, Orpen notes, evoke the passing of time, while the cuts, generally very ordered, expand the capacity for disrupting audience expectation. Prolonged pausing on empty frames and black screen as a light is switched off, she suggests, draw audience attention to the apartment itself – the focus of Jeanne Deilman’s life and featured in the title – as if it were another protagonist.
Reviewing the contested topic of the respective merits of montage and long takes Orpen notes: “The very fact that the word ‘decoupage’ (literally: ‘the cutting up’) can still be used to describe a single long take and even a sequence-shot reveals that editing involves a lot more that physical cutting and splicing” (83). Later she elaborates: “Editing is not more expressive than avoidance of editing; it is expressive in different ways” (116). She does note, however, that not all editing is expressive, but that when it is, it is visible and intended to be seen and responded to on a factual and figurative level. This she suggests challenges the assumed seamlessness of continuity editing since “as soon as editing becomes expressive, it also becomes visible” (117).
Apart from several design irritations: the absence of an index, an inadequate glossary, too few photo storyboards and poor quality pixelated images; this is a gem of a book. A distillation of Orpen’s doctorate – an impressive accomplishment in itself at a mere 138 pages – it is meticulously referenced and clearly and consistently argued in language that is generally accessible. The close readings are very well written for visual comprehension, and the inclusion of more detailed shot lists as appendices offers further explanation for readers who want it. Part of the Short Cuts series of introductory film texts, Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive provides a lucid blend of theoretical analysis and practical insights which has much to offer students of film or anyone with an interest in film editing, and makes a welcome contribution to the literature on this neglected field.
Mary Debrett
La Trobe University Australia
Created on: Monday, 6 December 2004 | Last Updated: 6-Dec-04