Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing

23  Éva Palotai

This modest contribution from Éva Palotai belies her perceptive perspective on Hungarian cinema. She has cut several times for György Molnár during her editing career.

I was born in Deggendorf in Bavaria. My father was a sculptor and my mother a civil servant with lots of skills. I was always very fond of reading and I loved literature. In my teenage years I read Hungarian and foreign novels and poetry. Hungarian translators are excellent and books in Hungary at that time were very cheap. As my father was a sculptor, from an early age I lived in the world of arts and artists.

In the early 1960s I spent a month in Ireland, when the film ‘West Side Story’¹ was released. It had a tremendous effect on me, as at that time Hungary was ...