Technique of Film Editing, Reissue of 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition

231

Introduction to the Fourth Section of the Enlarged Edition

In the fi fteen years since it was fi rst published, Karel Reisz book on the technique of fi lm editing has proved as

successful as any textbook on cinema in the English language. Already it has achieved 13 reprints in English. In

translation it has become the standard work on the subject in the Spanish, Czech, Polish and Russian languages.

After this long interval, the book clearly refl ects the normal attitude of established fi lm-makers to cinema:

that development as far as they are concerned stops now. Experiment is for the new-comer and the degree

of success won by his new ideas determines his position among the established, who refresh themselves by

studying his novel approach but rarely adopt his methods. The surviving members of the group of craftsmen

and women from among whose experience the material of the book was drawn had no inkling of the inno-

vations and changes ahead of them.

With the widening of the screen and the return to deep focus matching an increasing sophistication in fi lm-making

and in audience reaction, cinema has developed so far and so rapidly during the intervening period that this work

requires a new look. In ambitious fi ction fi lms the function of fi lm editing is more and more being determined at

the time of planning and shooting, and less and less in the subsequent assembly work in the cutting room.

The particular examination of genres in Mr. Reisz work remains valid in so far as the genres survive. For

example, the montage sequence dealt with at some length in Section 2 is no longer obligatory in the fi ction

fi lm, though it is not as yet entirely obsolete. However, a number of the general statements in Section 1 and

Section 3 no longer refl ect current thinking and processes.

With these ideas in mind, Part II (the new text in this work) has been written, in consultation with Karel Reisz, by

Gavin Millar, a former student of the Slade School of Fine Art in University College London, as a report on work in

progress rather than as a study of an historical development which has settled into a more or less defi nitive pattern.

But the problem remains. Too many books on cinema have been falsely updated by the mere attachment of

additional chapters to an out-of-date work. Yet in the present case re-writing was impossible, since nearly thirty

contributors to the original work were involved, scattered over many countries and some no longer living.

Our solution has been fi rst to stress the dating of the two parts, for unless cinema remains stagnant (horrid

thought) Part II will itself become out of date sooner rather than later, and, second, to highlight in Part I those

statements which I believe are no longer valid. Notes on these follow below.

On travelling about the world during the past fourteen years I have enjoyed a number of warm, personal refer-

ences which my association with this work have brought me. I remember in 1953 seeing the jacket of this book