Professor Valusiak became a film editor at the time of the Czech New Wave in the 1960s and he edited all the films of one of its leading lights, Jaromil Jires. At the same time he began to develop as a teacher at FAMU, a role he still fulfils with distinction. His erudition and passion are a potent combination.
I was born in a working-class family on 16 December 1934. From childhood I lived in a small town called Jilemnice, which is north of Prague in the Krkonose Mountains, where I graduated from High school. I was interested in reading imaginative and historical literature and in theatre and sports too. I played violin and accordion, but not very successfully. I also acted in some plays with a non-professional theatre group.
After an unsuccessful application to the Theatre Academy I started to study at the electro-technical faculty in Prague. Since I had come to the capital city with its many cinemas I became a frequent film-goer – sometimes I saw three movies a day. But I still didn’t quit my theatre group.
Later I specialised in the radio, film and TV at the electro-technical faculty and completed my Masters examination in 1958. In the same year at the world technological exhibition: Expo 58 in Brussels the two Czechoslovakian inventions carried off the award – these were the Polyecran and the Laterna Magica.1 After my graduation I worked as an engineer in Polyecran and later as a scenic technician at the Laterna Magica Theatre. But I still aspired to creative work and I started to study in the direction department at FAMU in 1961.
As I was mostly interested in fiction films and felt that I wouldn’t be the best director, I decided to change departments and in the third year I started to study editing which department had recently been developed by the director and editor, Jan Kucera,2 who became my biggest influence. Also the director Elmar Klos (Academy Award winner in 1965 for ‘The Shop on Main Street’3) was my teacher and I edited his last film ‘Touha zvaná Anada’4 some time later. Very important for me was also the co-operation with Jaromil Jires,5 one of the directors of the Czech New Wave, whose 13 features and many of his TV films I edited. Of the many world film-makers who affected me one I must mention is Andrei Tarkovsky.
In 1965 I worked as an assistant editor and from 1966 as an editor at the Barrandov Studios in Prague. In 1972 Doctor Kucera asked me to lecture at the editing department in FAMU where I continue to teach to this day. I was also influenced by many talented people – the variety of genres, experimental forms and subject matter were the sources of experiences that influenced my mind and work. At that time I started to publish many reflections and essays in professional magazines.
Editing is the basic principle of film-making and we could talk for a long time about the creative force function of the shot by shot shooting. Sometimes the director edits his film by himself and I know of some good ones made in this way. But the educated editor brings new, fresh eyes to the film process, he is not influenced by the stress of the shooting or by the plans and purposes as the director is. Basically the editor can see what really is in the material, not what was supposed to be there, so that he can find new variants and possibilities that the director who is fixed in his imaginings cannot see. Also the editor comes with his specific experiences, skills, talent, sensibility for image and sound expression, for the rhythm and tempo, combination and association thinking, etc. And when the director and editor are close in their intellectual, creative and also personal side, and they are also close to the subject matter of the film then their participation in the result is not just added but multiplied.
I don’t know enough films to categorically judge the differences between the European and Hollywood styles. In recent years it is rare that I have the opportunity to watch European films but I have the feeling that many of them copy Hollywood. The objective of the Hollywood film is profit, that means the highest number of viewers.
The subject matter, genres, stars, merchandising all address this agenda, and these criteria become important in my country too.
The European film also addresses the viewer, wants to make him laugh or touched. But it doesn’t use the dreamt-up banality, it tries to show the living characters, everyday situations, it shows social problems and existential problems, from the most ordinary and the most practical situations to the most spiritual ones. Typical of the European film is the expression ‘authors film’. The subject matter, the co-operation on the screenplay writing – this is all connected to one person who presents through the film his own reflections, doubts, thoughts that he has to share with other people, to commit himself. He feels he definitely HAS to make the film. And the best directors bring to the film their unique quality like Anderson, Antonioni, Bergman, Fellini, Tarkovsky….
The difference is that you don’t go to the cinema to watch ‘The Seventh Seal’6 but to watch Bergman, whereas you don’t go to watch Ridley Scott but to watch ‘The Alien’.7
I can only judge the work of Hollywood editors from the results of their work, by the films I have seen. Talking about their craft skills they are really good. Their work is more complicated because they have many variants in the number of shots taken for each scene, often by more than one camera. On the other hand this means that there are always alternatives to cut to and the real limitation is the causality of the story. The decisive point of his work is achieving the right rhythm and tempo (accent, psychological pause, gradation, etc.). With respect to the demands of films which appeal to the audience the tempo is getting faster and faster to avoid boring the spectator, not to let him think, and not to let him see the shallowness and weakness of the subject matter, but to overwhelm him with new action and situations. If we remember the tempo of films from ten or twenty years ago, it is unbelievable how much is now fitted in. And when the acceleration is not enough the film-makers bring a new interesting idea: the infraction of the story chronology. (In the cult film ‘Pulp Fiction’8 by Tarantino – which is not that good in my opinion – the infraction of the chronology is the main and only attraction.)
The European film is not just about the story, but about the subject matter, its message, the presentation of the relationships, causes and effects, introspection of the life and the soul, which is different from Hollywood films. The European film-makers also use the editing ‘inventions’ of the Russian avant-garde sometimes – by connecting the shots, their content is not only added to each other but multiplied, elevated so that a new consequence, hidden meanings or associations grow. The magic of the ‘area between the shots’ where the unspoken, magical and transcendent communication is born and where the attributes necessary for a work of art appear. The tempo of the storytelling does not depend on the frequency of the actions and attractions but on the control of timing where the emotion, philosophy and beauty are born.
The future of editing depends, of course, on the future of culture and on the future of mankind. The truth is that man has suicidal tendencies (the nuclear wars or ecological illiteracy, for example). Also the tendency to want to change culture for the entertainment industry and to forget about art is becoming powerful. In this respect I am not an optimist but I still hope the human soul will live on. Even if the worst happens, where film continues to exist – and I think it is in less danger than literature – editing will continue to exist because it is the basic element of film language. And this was not even changed by Jancsó and his film ‘Beloved Electra’,9 which was in fourteen shots or Sokurov’s film ‘The Russian Ark’10 in one shot. On the other hand experiments with form and other developments in film language (release of conventions) can bring new ways and variations in film editing. Because of this the film editor will always be indispensable.
With reference to work habits I am not a flexible man. I am not particular about any special rituals but in the editing room I prefer routine systematic procedure and order. Since the dissolution of the Barrandov Film Studios I have continued as a professor at FAMU and I have edited films very rarely. It is a gradual transition into retirement rather than a radical change. But of course, when I left the editing room after twenty-five years of working there, I felt sadness and regret. On the other hand every year I have the opportunity to meet new students, adepts in film, with different characters, opinions and temperaments.
To be an editor one needs to have specific abilities, of course, as any other artist. But how to define it? At FAMU we try to find the applicant’s general scope and sense of the film language (picture composition, sense for the music, rhythm, co-ordinated skills) during the application examinations. Patience and the ability to concentrate for a long time is very important for this work too. As long as the art is polymorphic, the artist is as well. There definitely does not exist a prototype of the ideal editor. I know many editors who are great in their profession but they are all different characters. And something, which is very important is that, the editor must be able to co-operate with many different directors on many different kinds of film.
If I refuse to believe in destiny, I do not believe that one can be born as an editor. I definitely do not know a person, including myself, who as a child, wanted to become an editor. Thanks to TV there are many kids who want to be ‘a part of film-making’, but they usually mean directing or camera work, and mostly acting. Also the truth is that editing is a specific and unknown profession for most viewers, something they can’t even imagine and which is not the main subject for film magazines. The editor completes the work of all other contributors to film-making starting with the scriptwriter and the film crew – he knows about all the processes of film-making. He knows what was done well and what could have been done better. That is why editors, sooner or later become directors. That might be one reason why there are not many good editors. The other reason might be the anonymity of the editor’s work. The editor is dependent on the material that he works on. He cannot make an ingenious film with an ordinary screenplay and with uninspiring material. A magnificent editor is able to save many catastrophic scenes and can make a watchable film from below standard material. Neither the viewer nor the film professional watching this film knows the original material and therefore is unable to appreciate the ingenious editor’s efforts. So besides the question of why there are few really good editors, the editor could ask why there are just a few great films (including the Academy Award winners).
How do I choose which films to work on? The situation in my country is different, the director chooses the editor. I can only accept or refuse. Several that I had to refuse were mostly because of a weak screenplay. Unfortunately, I’ve had to refuse about twenty films in which the screenplay and director were good but the post-production plans overlapped. I quite like working on average films with nice directors, but I also worked on interesting films with less pleasant directors. The optimum was to work with friends whose name guaranteed more or less-quality films. The opposite combination was a disaster.
I prefer to read the script in advance and to be surprised by the shot material after some time. But I also worked with some directors who wanted to consult over dramaturgy and co-operate on the storyboard. The way of editing depends on the director and on how the shooting is organised. In the Barrandov Film Studio some directors wanted me to edit the scenes during the shooting so they could check whether their intentions were right or they should re-shoot. In other cases – and it is common nowadays – when the shooting is finished the director comes to the cutting room. Then we mostly do the rough cuts, set up the dramaturgy (order of scenes, flashbacks, etc.) and finally we correct the rhythm and finish the final cut.
The concept of sound design (‘vertical montage’ by S.M. Eisenstein)11 originates in the final stages of editing. I am disillusioned by the new tendencies of editors who edit the film only with the sound recorded during the shoot and the rest of the sound is up to the sound designer. During the editing I consider the dramatic sound that gives the character a deeper meaning; or an intense atmosphere, which needs a couple more frames as an afterglow. When the sound is a couple of frames wrong or it absolutely misses then it makes the final cut bad or poor at least.
The silent movie illustrates that the picture is more important than the sound. But nowadays movies are audio – visual work, and although the sound cannot totally compensate for the picture – although some less adept directors try to say everything of importance with the dialogue – the film should be improved, aesthetically and significantly by the sound design. We sometimes designed the sound as a trio in Barrandov Film Studios – the director, editor and sound designer so the latter already knew what sounds he would need to record during the shoot.
The same group of people, plus the music composer met again in the editing room when the final cut was almost done. The definitive final cut was done after the music was composed and precisely placed. In this situation I could influence the way music was used. I had even more influence when we used archive music, where the use and positioning were decided between the director and myself. Usually it is the editor who has control over the rhythm of the film – often by adjusting the timing of dialogue – but in special cases like with playback or in musical films – the music takes control of the editor. It is not necessary to be a music specialist but the editor should have a musical sensitivity and especially for its reference to picture. I suffer when I watch a film I edited and, especially in documentaries, music has been added which I did not know about. I can feel the picture and the music flow independently from each other and in some places accidental fusions come up causing wrong and disturbing combinations.
My opinion regarding digital technology, thanks to my age and experience, is very conservative: I miss the subjective contact with the film material, I miss holding it, physically cutting in between specific marked frames, making a rough cut shot-by-shot. The pictures appear on the computer monitor, the variants and the combinations change and I react like I am playing some kind of computer game – and the result is not a roll of film but some virtual scheme of signals that can disappear by some lapse forever in a moment. It may seem ridiculous but I think it is like a designer creating a vase by vectors and lines on a monitor compared to a potter who makes it from clay on a wheel.
But lets forget the sentiment; I realise the two most important differences. Originally the editor had to work with the material that was shot by the cameraman. The tricks and the double exposures, the fade ins and outs were made much later as opticals in the laboratory and the editor had to believe his experiences or just his imagination, and often he saw these things in the final print without having the chance to change them. In digital editing the editor can manipulate the material considerably. In my experience he can change the size of the picture, the colours of the whole shot or a part, can remove unwanted parts of the image, prolong it by freeze frame or slowing it down, change the rhythm by adjusting the speed of all or part of a scene or shot. The second difference is in the organisation of the work. In the classical way the film was born in a couple of months – sometimes with breaks. In the digital editing room you can achieve the work in a couple of weeks. It is technically possible to make the film in this time but not with the meaning that comes from a process of creative maturation. It is difficult for me to accept this way.
This leads me to a thought about my own character. That is my ‘personal inner rhythm’. I think I have a meditative character. I like to deeply analyse the thoughts and situations, the metaphoric, inner and transcendental purpose. And I would appreciate the same interest from the audience but in general they don’t care. But I still like to give them the opportunity to meditate by themselves. This means that I prefer a slower tempo and do not like to needlessly edit shots just for the sake of a fast rhythm. I prefer to keep with a shot in order to achieve a psychological and symbolical effect, to enjoy its aesthetic quality. But I am not surprised when directors want me to speed up the rhythm at the final stage of editing.
For my taste and as witness to my nature I can add other names and films: Delvaux, Olmi, Sindo, Wenders and from England, Leigh (‘Secrets and Lies’) and Rickman (‘The Winter Guest’). Also many Russian directors – Abuladze, Ioseliani, Konchalovsky, Lopushansky, Michailkov, etc. Finally films of the Czech directors – Passer, Gedeon, Slama.12
There are films, which, rightly or wrongly, I call spiritual films which show the human soul in the deepest way and also contain providential and existential dimensions. And these are the films that I would like to edit. But there aren’t a lot of films like this in the world, especially in my country and they are rapidly decreasing. But we cannot have everything that we want and I can put up with the new films that bring something new and interesting and allow me to look for new solutions. I am grateful for the hundreds of feature and TV films and many documentaries, particularly the musical ones I have worked on.
I am glad I was an editor.
Notes
1. Polyecran and Laterna Magica – theatrical techniques for incorporating imagery on film allied to live actors.
2. Jan Kucera – teacher, actor, director.
3. Elmar Klos (1910–93) – director ‘The Shop on Main Street,’ 1965.
4. Touha zvaná Anada – Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos, 1969.
5. Jaromil Jires (1935–2001) – director, e.g. ‘Valerie and her Week of Wonders,’ 1970.
6. The Seventh Seal – Ingmar Bergman, 1957.
7. The Alien – Ridley Scott, 1979.
8. Pulp Fiction – Quentin Tarantino, 1994.
9. Beloved Electra – Miklós Jancsó, 1974.
10. The Russian Ark – Alesandr Sokurov, 2002.
11. Vertical Montage – Sergei Eisenstein – See his book ‘Towards a Theory of Montage’.
12. List of Directors with an outstanding credit:
André Delvaux (1926–2002) – ‘Woman between Wolf and Dog’ 1979.
Ermanno Olmi – Born 1931, ‘Tree of Wooden Clogs’ 1978.
Wim Wenders – Born 1945, ‘Goalkeepers Fear of the Penalty’ (1972) ‘Paris Texas,’ 1984.
Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies 1996.
Alan Rickman’s The Winter Guest – and actor, 1997.
Tengiz Abuladze (1924–94) – ‘Repentance,’ 1987.
Otar Ioseliani – Born 1934, ‘The Butterfly Hunt,’ 1992.
Andrei Konchalovsky – Born 1937, ‘Maria’s Lovers,’ 1984.
Konstantin Lopushansky – Born 1947, ‘Letters from a Dead Man,’ 1986.
Nikita Michailkov – Born 1945, ‘Burnt By the Sun,’ 1994.
Ivan Passer – Born 1933, ‘Intimate Lighting’ 1969.
Sasa Gedeon – Born 1970, ‘Indian Summer,’ 1995.
Bohdan Slama – Born 1967, ‘The Wild Bees,’ 2001.