Reading the Film

What do the films “Charade”, “Copycat”, “The Mission”, “The World is not Enough” and “Vera Drake” have in common? Other than immense popularity and a sequence of closing credits, not much. Oh, but they all have Jim Clark. If you are not already familiar with the eclectic career of this amicable editor from Lincolnshire, UK, then allow me to introduce you.

Jim Clark has been editing feature films since 1956. John Schlesinger, with whom he has worked several times, has consulted him for directorial work, as did Gene Wilder when Clark edited Wilder’s directorial debut, “The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” (one of Clark’s personal favorites and highest reccomendations, if you can find it). Clark has worked uncredited as an editor on dozens of films beyond his official repertoir, including one of his most precious jewels in his crown, “Midnight Cowboy”.

For most film fanatics, post production is mysterious process - a dark room behind a locked door reading “Employees only.” While preserving the “magic” of filmmaking, the enigmatic editing process often leaves editors themselves out of the public eye as well as public acclaim. Clark, however, doesn’t seem to care in the slightest. “We don’t sign the name on the material, it’s not a film by Jim Clark, it’s a film by somebody else.” But who a film is “by” and who actually makes the motion picture audiences are enraptured with, is a tremendous difference. “It is a truism to say we remake films. Very often our job is to remake a film that is not working.” For Clark, at least, that job is rewarded as well as rewarding. In 1984, Clark earned an Oscar for the project which he considers to be the most challenging one in his career to date, Roland Joffe's, “The Killing Fields”. "The editing of that was quite arduous. It was a) way too long and b) people didn’t understand it." By the time Clark was done with it, "The Killing Fields" was one of the most acclaimed films of its year.

Being the one who can either make or break a film can be a hazardous position if one doesn't also have a trusting relationship with the film's director. As Clark asserts, it is better to get personal before one gets professional. "I like to be in close proximity to the director as much as possible because then you get to know them as people befo re you sit down with them in the editing room and show them the film in is worst possible state, when you have to say, 'It’s not going to be worse then this,’ as they sit down to watch their three hour epic that should be ninety five minutes." Much to his dismay, however, the film industry is often not a personal space. "These days we often work away from directors. On the last film I did ("Opal Dreams") I never saw him. I’d phone him up, but I never met him till the very end."

It might come as a surprise to those on the outside of filmmaking, but the director's absence during the editing process is as commonplace as it is unproblematic. Clark claims, "If the director is happy with it then everything is fine. If its not what he had in mind, then I simply ask what he had in mind." But ultimately, the final decision usually comes down to Clark. "We’re always trying to accentuate the material. The material dictates what you do." And if the director is not a film's "dictator", then is it in fact the editor's style audiences and critics are seeing when they remark on a film's distinctness? Clark thinks not – at least not concerning his own career. "Style is something you’re unconcscience of. Maybe I have a style. If I did I wouldn’t be able to describe it. Its eclectic I guess." Clark notes that more often than not, an editor's "style" is actually something like pigeonholing after an editor has done good work on a topic or genre. "Take the woman who did 'My Architect' for instance. Now all the projects she gets are interested in her working on things about architecture and things like that. There are people known as 'comedy editors' and 'action editors.' I haven’t gotten that."

Lucky enough for audiences who have enjoyed Clark's little known treasures such as, "Day of the Locusts" (another of his personal favorites) in addition to his international blockbusters (for those of you Bond fans, Clark is enthusiastic about doing another for the franchise), Clark has eluded that pigeonhole for fifty years and counting. There is something all his films have in common though, and thats consistently incredible quality and attention to detail. Would "Charade" be a classic today if it had not struck that balance between suspense and tongue-in-cheek? (Recall the famous shot of the sinister pistol that seamlessly transforms into a water gun in one deft cut.) Clark may not "sign" his films, but he is written all over them. After all, the editor is not the author of a film but rather, its interpreter. “Depending on the (director) and the material itself and how you interpret the material, you cut to literally, re-make the film back into what it was in the director's mind or the script.... First, I read the script, then I read the film.”

Katie Kohn

© Berlinale Talent Campus 2006