All editors are writers but not all writers are editors

This is an essay I wrote for school and I thought I might share it here even if i'm not 100% happy with it.

All editors are writers but not all writers are editors. Recently on Facebook I saw a headline from a filmmaking website that was about the editing of the latest Mark Wahlberg movie ‘Deepwater Horizon’. It stated that the editors were treating the editing room as a writing room in terms of the film’s parallel narrative. I’m not sure if it was a clickbait title or if the people who ran the site genuinely believe that editors just put the film together and that’s the end of that. Maybe the people who run the site have never heavily restructured a piece of work and have never realised that editors have been rewriting movies for years. Either way it doesn’t matter if the editor changes the structure or doesn’t touch change the film from the script, the editor should be a writer just as much as the writer and director of the film are.

The Conformist is a classic example of restructuring a movie to rearrange its anatomy. When director Bernardo Bertolucci decided to turn the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia, he kept the books linear plot in the script. He also wanted Roberto Perpignani as his editor (who he worked on The Spider Stratagem with - Bertolucci’s last film) but executive producer, Giovanni Bertolucci convinced him to choose Franco Arcalli. After the release of the film Bertolucci admitted how much of an influence he had on the film. Arcalli was also a screenwriter which would’ve helped his understanding of the film at its core. He was a storyteller not someone who would be given pieces to assemble like a lego set and then left to follow the instructions. His assistant editor Gabriella Cristiani said that “Kim didn’t assault so much the film material itself as the structure. He intervened strongly on the structure.” and “He didn’t just limit himself to trimming and linking together the shots; he bothered about the structure and the narrative of the film”.

By restructuring the film Arcalli in turn shifted the film’s emphasis. As a linear story the film suffers from a lack of unifying dramatic driven plot. The story would start as a boy (Marcello Clerici) discovering his sexuality and move towards his dedication to the fascist government and police, his marriage and finally the killing of his college professor. Arcalli recognises the importance of the assassination and its impact on Marcello’s ideas of conforming within society. The ways in which Marcello goes about his life and how he moulded himself to fit within society has an undeniable influence from Freudian Psychology. The movie would’ve had this present in its subtext without its restructure but Arcalli has made it feel like we are going into someone’s head; almost like a psychologist would.

One idea within Freudian psychology is the mind’s structure of id, ego and superego. I believe if the film was edited in chronological order the audience would subconsciously look for and allocate a character one of the three categories as the plot progresses. Whereas what was presented hands it straight to the audience.

Several characters can be seen as the Ids in the story, his mordine riddled Mother, insane Father and his wife. The Mother is blatantly influenced by Marcello, his Father is only compelled by the voices in his head and his wife always tries to bed Marcello. Marcello himself is an ego and strives for the ‘normal’ life and move up to the super ego category, but thanks to his traumatic childhood, is holding back from progressing the way he wants. The ego is not embodied by a person, it could be seen as the fascist secret police but if you look closer. Closer into what affects Marcello you will see it is rather society as a whole, even if it’s full of Ids.

In the first ten minutes Arcalli sets up the movies flashback structure but he doesn't hold the audience's hand by fading or with title cards, he simply uses a short J cut. It took me two watches (of the first ten minute video) to get that the movie was mostly taking place in flashbacks. The first time we delve into Marcello’s memory we could easily presume that this isn't a flashback but rather where the car he is in has taken him. You could in theory call these flashbacks the Kuleshov flashback. A man looking into the distance followed by the shot of what he is looking at, but in this case what he is thinking. Arcalli’s restructure also influences this process. If the movie had been presented in a chronological order the events leading up to the climax would make the movie one about the life story of Marcello. Instead this Kuleshov flashback structure composes the events of the past have more of an emotional impact on the audience as well as Marcello.

Arcalli also sets up the rhythm of the movie with in the first ten minutes. He starts the movie off slow as Marcello is trying to conform within society but as it starts to take a toll on him and as the plot progresses the rhythm picks up in tempo. This is the movie’s dramatic intensity increasing as we move closer to the assassination.

While i’ve had trouble finding any interviews from Franco Arcalli, where I was hoping to find out if the footage given to him was coverage or montage, I can probably deduce that the film was shot in a montage manner. Few conversations take place in shot - reverse shot and when they do, the compositions change as to not bore the audience and reflect character. Some shots, if done by a lesser director would have shot them individually and then assemble them in the editing room (the shots at 00:06:34 and 00:09:30 are two examples of this). This helps Bertolucci find his artistic voice and for Arcalli to be on the same page so that by restructuring the scenes he would help Bertolucci’s voice resonate.

If Franco Arcalli hadn’t restructured the film I don’t think audiences would have responded to it the same way they have, nor would it have a lasting impact over the last 46 years. The book of the same simply didn’t have the cinematic qualities it needed to make a great movie on a fundamental level. Arcalli’s skill as a writer without a doubt exponentially helped the movie understand its subtext. He was certainly both a writer and editor.

References

Chris Wagstaff, 2012. Il conformista (The Conformist) (BFI Film Classics). Edition. British Film Institute.

Interview in Stefano Masi, Nel buio della moviola: introduzione alla storia del montaggio (L’Aquila: La Lanterna Magica, 1986), reprinted in the booklet accompanying the Minevra RaroVideo Dvd of The Conformist