Today, we’re going to be taking a look at the Best Editing category, our first tech category. Editing is often ignored as a tech category because it’s not always the most showy or noticeable, but when a film feels like, breezy, cohesive and comprehendable, that’s because the editor did his job. Sometimes it’s the job of the editor to remain invisible and sometimes it’s to be as flashy as possible and each style has their fans. Here are our predictions for the award, plus some facts and our favorite and least favorite winners in this category.

Trivia: Five Facts

• The category was introduced in 1934 at the 7th Academy Awards ceremony. The first winner was Conrad Nervig for Eskimo.
• Anne Bauchens became the first woman to win this category in 1940. She was also the first woman to win a tech category (if music is included as tech, then she’s the second behind Dorothy Fields’ Original Song win 4 years earlier).
• 98 individuals have won this trophy across its 76-year history. The most individuals to win in one year was 1983 when five editors were nominated for an won the award for piecing together The Right Stuff.
• In its history, only 9 films have managed to win Best Picture without a corresponding Best Film Editing nomination. The last time this happened was nearly 30 years ago when Ordinary People won Best Picture in 1980.
• 15 editors have received 2 or more awards in this category. Only four editors have won three awards: Michael Kahn (Steven Spielberg’s editor-of-choice: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List & Saving Private Ryan), Daniel Mandell (The Pride of the Yankees, The Best Years of Our Lives & The Apartment) and Thelma Schoonmaker (Martin Scorsese’s go-to editor: Raging Bull, The Aviator & The Departed).

Predictions

• Avatar – Steven Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron (Wesley, Peter, Tripp, Wes)
• District 9 – Julian Clarke
• The Hurt Locker – Bob Murawski, Chris Innis (Wesley, Peter, Tripp, Wes)
• Inglourious Basterds – Sally Menke
• Precious – Joe Klotz

KEY: (Winner Prediction) (Alternate Winner)

The Commentary

Wesley Lovell – Best Pictures aren’t always good choices for winners in this category, but considering the technical aspects of The Hurt Locker, I find it difficult not to pick the film as the winner. After all, it did pick up the American Cinema Editors Award (not a guarantee, but a fairly good bet with only 3 misses in the last 20 years).
Peter J. Patrick – The tight, taut editing of The Hurt Locker is as responsible as anything for the look and feel of the film. I don;t see how it can lose, but if it does it will most likely be to Avatar which features the most editing of any film this year.
Tripp Burton – In the first of the technical battles we are looking at, I will give the edge here to The Hurt Locker over Avatar. They are going to be battling it out head-to-head, and here I think The Hurt Locker should trump. Its action scenes are tautly constructed and the film moves at a much brisker pace than the more sprawling Avatar. Even its detractors admit that the action sequences work brilliantly, and that should carry over here.

Our Favorite Winners

KEY:
Appears on Two Lists
Appears on Three Lists
Appears on Four Lists
Appears on Opposing Lists

Wesley Lovell

1. The French Connection (A quintessential example of the power and prestige of editing, this is now the text book case for how chase scenes should be handled.)
2. Jaws (Tension in horror has seldom been better handled. This is one of those winners you can’t help but cheer.)
3. The English Patient (Such a difficult story to present without confusing the audience, Walter Murch does wonders keeping the plot pieced together so we can keep track of everything.)
4. The Matrix (The stunning victory of The Matrix in the editing category proves that this is one place where smart, well-edited blockbusters can still compete with the rote material that makes up my least favorite list.)
5. Platoon (War films seldom get better than this. Keeping the action vivid and controlled while keeping the audience enthralled is what makes this one such a great work.)

Peter J. Patrick

1. Lawrence of Arabia (impressive images seamlessly are edited into the film’s cohesive story line.)
2. Gone With the Wind (was it the way it was photographed or the way that it was edited that is responsible for its amazing look? Probably a bit of both.)
3. Cabaret (best example of an integrated musical and dramatic work brilliantly pieced together.)
4. The Sound of Music (another film in which the cinematography and editing go hand in hand. )
5. Chicago (nicely pieced together from interesting bits and pieces.)

Tripp Burton

1. JFK
2. Cabaret
3. Z
4. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
5. The Adventures of Robin Hood

This is one of the hardest categories to judge, mostly because we can have no understanding of most of the job an editor has done on a film. We don’t know what footage was left on the floor, what the shooting script looked like, and how they took nothing to create something. All we can judge on is how a story moves on stage and what visible editing has done to convey that story. JFK and Z are sprawling political sagas that never seem confusing because of the tight construction their editors gave them. Cabaret brilliantly bounces from our story to the emcee’s commentaries in an engaging way, while The Adventures of Robin Hood remains the greatest adventure film of all time. Finally, you have Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where the editing is essential in blending together one of the most impressively fantastic worlds in cinema history.

Wes Huizar

1. Raging Bull
2. JFK
3. Star Wars
4. Lawrence of Arabia
5. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Our Least Favorite Winners

KEY:
Appears on Two Lists
Appears on Three Lists
Appears on Four Lists
Appears on Opposing Lists

Wesley Lovell

1. Dances With Wolves (Some would gripe at this award being the trophy for “most editing”, but editing is so integral to storytelling that I’m surprised by how often big, lumbering epics like this manage to win a prize. Trimming was desperately needed to keep this mammoth film from feeling so dreadfully long.)
2. Forrest Gump (This is the perfect example of how the Academy’s editing branch can’t recognize great time jumping (Memento), but will reward pedantic cross-time narratives.)
3. Crash (When people complain about “most editing”, this is the Oscar winner that easily comes to mind. Just because it juggles multiple stories does not make it a great edit job.)
4. Around the World in 80 Days (The film felt like it took 80 Days to get anywhere. Like Dances With Wolves, this film could have used a better editor to trim away the superfluous fat that kept it from moving quickly.)
5. The Sting (Sometimes small films do win this award and oftentimes those are also Best Picture winners. What The Sting is doing in this winners circle stymies me to this day, but I presume it’s because of the use of the “twist”, which doesn’t feel that twisty to me.)

Peter J. Patrick

1. All That Jazz (crappy movie won for editing garish dance sequences with open heart surgery being performed on the lead character. An ugly, repulsive film which didn’t deserve any of its four Oscars, least of all this one.)
2. The Matrix (so the special effects and live action sequence meld together. So what? )
3. Gandhi (one scene ends and another begins. I didn’t find anythign extraordinary about the editing.)
4. Witness (see Gandhi.)
5. Crash (lots of busy editing, but since editing goes hand in hand with cinematography in creating the overall look of the film, what exactly is there to look at that we care to remember? )

Tripp Burton

1. Chicago
2. The Aviator
3. Gandhi
4. Crash
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Bad editing comes in two categories for me. Chicago represents the first group, the near frenetic jump cuts of the post-MTV musical. In that film’s case, it took what could have been a masterful film and brought it down a notch through incomprehensible dance scenes. The other group of bad editing is sprawling, lazy epics that drag on far too long by not tightly compressing a story: see The Aviator, Gandhi and The Return of the King’s ten endings as perfect examples of interesting stories that never completely gel together. As for Crash, this is a condemnation of the film more than the editing, which was merely passable.

Wes Huizar

To be perfectly honest, I don’t find any of the winners to be that objectionable. I haven’t seen most of the older winners, however, so I can’t really comment on those.