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 still an ‘Iron Curtain’ country and ‘such bourgeois shit’ was banned. Later our country began to open up to Western culture. I remember that around 1964 there was a British Film Week held in Budapest, and young people fought for tickets to see ‘Becket’2 with Burton and O’Toole, ‘Hard Days’ Night’3 and so forth.
In my parents’ time – Hungary after the war – cinema didn’t play a big role in entertainment. They (and of course me as a child) preferred to go to exhibitions, opera, concerts but very seldom to the cinema because – at least that’s what I think now – they showed mainly Russian (Soviet) films. It was a type of passive resistance in the 1950s and early 1960s. I first encountered film as an art form in Grammar school when it was obligatory to see Soviet films. Some of them were excellent, e.g. ‘Ballad of a Soldier’4 by Grigori Chukhraj and ‘The Cranes are Flying’5 by Mikheil Kalatozishvili. Later, at the end of the 1960s I think it was mainly the French ‘nouvelle vague’ that developed my interest in cinema – and I became hooked.
Editing was not my first choice as a career. I wanted to work as a graphic artist, but I wasn’t admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts. I worked for five years – believe it or not – before the decision to be a film editor came to me as ‘an inspiration from heaven’, without any knowledge of the work itself. At that time I met someone who was an assistant editor at Hungarian Television (MTV) and as she was expecting a baby I got her job.
I was lucky, at Hungarian Television I worked for the Dramatic Group, which produced TV features – about fifty single films and plays a year. From the editor for whom I worked I was able to learn all the technical skills, which were needed for cutting on 16mm and 35mm film as well as dubbing. While I was working at MTV I studied two days a week at the Academy for Film and Theatre. So our company, MTV, supported our studies. The aim of our training was to get a general education including music, arts, film history, dramaturgy, philosophy, etc. We had practical sessions in the cutting room trying the possibilities with material together with discussions. Beyond the lessons we edited all the films shot by director and camera students at the Academy. Our editor teacher at film school was very important as she taught us a lot about the attitude towards the directors one worked with. For me the directors who were important then were Károly Makk6 as a professor and Miklós Jancsó7 for whom I edited a ‘subjective documentary’ film.
I was also strongly affected by some particular films amongst which were Károly Makk’s ‘Szerelem’ (Love), Miklós Jancsó’s ‘Szegénylegények’ (The Round Up) and István Szabó’s ‘Álmodozások kora’ (The Age of Day-Dreaming). Internationally ‘Á Bout de Souffle’, ‘Jules et Jim’, ‘ Blow-Up’, ‘ La Strada’, ‘ Eight-and-a-half’, ‘Easy Riders’, ‘Cabaret’, ‘All That Jazz’ and nowadays the Mike Leigh films.8
I’m not sure that any of the films I have cut can demonstrate what editors contribute to cinema. Several of them were important in my life, but one never knows, watching a film, what is the editor’s part in it. Here, and I think everywhere in Europe, where film-making is not of the Hollywood type the editor is good if his/her contribution remains hidden.
Most European ‘art’ films are films of the director. In Europe the editor is a discussion partner for the director – of course also an expert (maybe the best) in editing. The main demand is to be a partner in every sense of the word, not just someone who moves around bits of film in a film factory. Of course I can only speak for myself.
I love digital non-linear. No lost frames, no long rewinds. The ‘undos’! I think this technology only differs from film editing in its quickness and effortlessness, and has given back the freedom of editing after years of analogue technology. You can retry and keep all the versions you’ve ever made and it presents no problem if the director decides after twelve different attempts that after all the second was the really good one. The possibility of having all the effects at hand and not waiting for the lab, to see a transition or a motion effect for the first time frightened me, but now I feel liberated and I can use my creativity for the sake of the movie.
I think each type of editing has its reasons for existence. The Hollywood type movie needs the expert. The European film needs a partner, but the editor is becoming redundant for those who make their films with only the editors technical help and not with an intellectual partner, but this is the director’s loss. Joking apart I believe that in non-fictional and low-budget independent filmmaking the demand for an editor is decreasing.
I am sure that a proud and vain person has difficulties being an editor. If you cannot push your egoism and vanity to the background, if you want to be praised and appreciated all the time you may be a good editor but you will be an unhappy person. I think many qualities which are useful for an editor are the so-called feminine qualities – being like a good mother or a gardener, who is tolerant and loving, but on occasion can be strong-minded and forceful for the ‘child’s’ good. I might be mistaken but in Hungary at least, all the editors who are/were ‘masculine types’, whether by gender or temperament, have become directors.
I don’t even know who is a good editor. I really mean this. I don’t know whom we can call a great editor. Coming out from the cinema, you can hardly tell whether the editor of a film was really good or not. You can judge the film but not the editor. Maybe this sounds disappointing from an editor, but this is how I feel. You can never stand in the spotlight if you are an editor, except if you – or your film – wins an Oscar.
1. West Side Story – Directed by Robert Wise, 1961.
2. Becket – Directed by Peter Glenville with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, 1964.
3. Hard Day’s Night – Richard Lester, script by Alun Owen, 1964.
4. Ballad of a Soldier – Directed by Chukhraj, 1959.
5. The Cranes are Flying – Kalatozishvili, 1957.
6. Károly Makk – Director born 1925, e.g. ‘Another Way’, 1982.
7. Miklós Jancsó – Director born 1921, e.g. ‘Red Psalm’ (1971), Best Director at Cannes.
8. Films and filmmakers:
Love – Károly Makk, Jury prize Cannes, 1971.
The Round Up – Miklós Jancsó. A revelation at the time because of Jancsó’ daring choreography of movement in shots sometimes as long as seven or eight minutes. A style he sustained through many films, 1965.
The Age of Day-Dreaming – István Szabó, 1964.
Breathless – Jean-Luc Godard, 1960.
Jules et Jim – François Truffaut, 1962.
Blow-Up – Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966.
La Strada – Federico Fellini, 1954.
Eight-and-a-half – Fellini, 1963.
Easy Riders – Dennis Hopper (with Peter Fonda), 1969.
Cabaret – Bob Fosse, 1972.
All That Jazz – Bob Fosse, 1979.
Mike Leigh – e.g. Secrets and Lies, 1996.