THE KINDEST CUTS

By RICHARD CORLISS

WITH ALL THE PRE-OSCAR handicapping at the office water cooler, you don't hear many hot arguments about who's going to get the Editing award. So next Monday night, when that category is announced--"And the nominees are: Apollo 13, Babe, Braveheart, Crimson Tide and Seven"--and the winner stumbles into the spotlight to thank his mom and the director, almost no one will notice.

And why should we notice, or care? Are we missing anything? Isn't the editor's job just to paste together perfect scenes the director has shot on the set? A lot of Elmer's glue is probably involved.

"The public has no idea what we do," gripes Chris Lebenzon, nominated this year for editing Crimson Tide. "They think the scenes come out of the camera ready-made. Well, we take a mass of film and make a story out of it." It may be a massive mass: director Tony Scott shot 148 hours of footage for Lebenzon to play with. "My job," he says, "was to find the best two hours' worth." For a good editor, all that exposed film is like a slab of marble--marbles, really--from which he makes a coherent sculpture.

In the process, the editor may also make art. Any cinephile's collection of favorite movie moments will include the Odessa Steps sequence from Eisenstein's Potemkin, the Citizen Kane dinner-table scene, the shower murder in Psycho, the final killings in Bonnie and Clyde--all of which were created not so much on the set as on the editing table. Try to imagine these scenes in single long takes, and you start to appreciate editing's vital contribution: it gives films the collision of images that creates a collision of emotions. It has been the primary technical touchstone for great directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Alain Resnais, Martin Scorsese) and vibrant movie movements (the Soviet silent cinema). From the brilliantly intercut chase scenes in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) to the dizzyingly allusive montages in Oliver Stone's JFK and Natural Born Killers, editing is moviemaking.

Of the finalists for the editing Oscar this year, each illustrates an interesting facet of the craft: the integration of special effects and character development of Apollo 13, the mix of animals and robot beasts in Babe, the bloody briskness of the battle sequences in Braveheart, the claustrophobic submarine struggle in Crimson Tide and the jolting impact of Seven. Character study, animal film, martial epic, macho debating, upscale splatter--all genres sizzle or sink depending on the editor's skill.

The films nominated in this category are typically action films, which helped get Crimson Tide and Seven their nods, though they were not cited for Best Picture. It is also why this year's nod to Babe wins cheers even from a rival, Braveheart's Steven Rosenblum: "Groups like the Academy often don't recognize how well edited these quiet pictures are." Seven's Richard Francis-Bruce adds that the contemplative Il Postino deserved a mention for its deft matching of shots, within the same scene, of the ailing Massimo Troisi and his body double who appears in about half of the film. "If they had known, maybe they would have voted for it."

Just as the Motion Picture Academy tends to honor showy performances, it also lauds movies whose editing is either dramatically nonrealistic or fast fast fast. The theory is that editing is good if you notice it. But most movies work in the style of romantic naturalism; their goal is to make you believe, not to concentrate on the artistry of each of the 400 or so shots in a standard feature film. Editing, then, is the seams that don't show. The rule in Babe, says co-editor Jay Friedkin, was "Never break the spell." Most editors follow that commandment. "Editing should be invisible," says Robert Wise, an editor on Citizen Kane before he became a director, "so that the whole comes together in a strong, effective piece that carries the audience away."

While the cast and crew are on the set, the editor is in the cutting room, assembling footage, feeling out the rhythm and personality of each scene. What should be emphasized? The editor has infinite options. "In Crimson Tide," says Lebenzon, "there's a scene out in the rain where the guys are being addressed by Gene Hackman for the first time. There was so much film on that and so many ways to go. In a way it was a very traditional General Patton scene, but I slammed into these big close-ups from wide shots. It somehow became very effective at crucial points."

EDITORS USUALLY TAKE THEIR CUE from the director. On Seven, for example, director David Fincher "wanted the cuts to be hard and jarring, like the TV show Cops," says Francis-Bruce. "The trick to that is not to make it look bad, but to make it look raw-edged." But they are also digging for buried treasure. On Babe, "the director often just turned on the camera and hoped to dear God he got something that matched," says Friedkin, who cut the film with Marcus D'Arcy. "There's one shot where the pig is backing down the gangplank and falls off. That was obviously a blown take. But in the cutting room, Marcus saw that it took on an extra dimension. He put it in, and it's one of the funniest bits in the film."

Once shooting ends, the editor has an intimate relationship with the director--12-hour days that may last for months. Says Ron Howard (Apollo 13) of his work with editors Michael Hill and Daniel Hanley: "It's really gotten down to grunts and stares and head shakes. They can see exactly what I was going for."

Or see where he should go, since the editor must also be a storyteller with scissors. Mel Gibson, director and star of Braveheart, praises editor Rosenblum for his "story sense," which allowed them to cut entire chunks without losing the flow. One cut: a long sequence in which the hero catches wind of a British ambush planned to take place at his wife's grave. Gibson has a graphic metaphor for experienced editors: "They're like great surgeons, able to make the right kind of adjustments in places that most of us wouldn't look for. They get into that room with a pair of scissors, cut the cancer out, slap it back together to see if it works." And that's how editors' cuts save directors' butts.

The best editors--like Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's longtime wizard with the shears--say they can save a bad film, "but no editor can ever make it great if the material is fatally flawed. You have to have the footage. And a bad editor can ruin a good film." That's something Schoonmaker would not be capable of. Her collaborations with Scorsese, including Raging Bull, GoodFellas and Casino, have pushed the editing craft into a postmodern, almost hallucinogenic art. They are what films can be.

Schoonmaker will not be called onstage Monday night; Casino was blindly ignored by Oscar voters in this category. But one or two craftsmen will be up there, briefly focusing the world's attention on a crucial, neglected part of the film process. Try not to edit them out of your evening.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles, with Daniel S. Levy/New York

With reporting by JEFFREY RESSNER/LOS ANGELES, WITH DANIEL S. LEVY/NEW YORK