Agnès Guillemot: the overshadowed film editor of the French New Wave
Directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were often considered the leaders of the French New Wave, a cinematic movement that ushered in a new era of filmmaking. Wanting to make movies concerned with truth, these filmmakers took more radical approaches to crafting films that were completely different from those popular at the time.
Ditching studios for naturalistic settings like the streets of Paris, the French New Wave prioritised certain identifiable qualities, like handheld filming, improvisation, and fourth wall breaks. Editing was also a major factor in making French New Wave movies so formally radical, and Godard’s films are most commonly used as examples. From Masculin Feminin to La Chinoise and Vivre sa vie, these films used techniques that captivated viewers, like jump cuts and choppy editing, which made his films highly stimulating.
He forced viewers to consider the form of films, telling many stories that were, at their core, full of realism while presenting them in a deeply experimental and unconventional way. By doing so, viewers were kept on their toes, left to piece together ideas and think about cinema as an art form and unique storytelling medium.
So much credit is given to Godard for the editing style of his films, but he rarely edited them himself – at least for the early half of his career before his political phase. His main go-to editor was Agnès Guillemot, a woman who had actually been brought up with a deep love of music rather than film.
Yet, it was her interest in the way conductors gave life to pre-existing work that eventually led her to film editing. She had studied philosophy, but then, after attending the film school IDHEC, she knew that editing was her calling. “It was meant for me,” she told Roger Crittenden. Guillemot didn’t know Godard before she began working with him, but “he had asked one of my former pupils in IDHEC if she knew somebody who was not deformed by traditional films who could edit his film.”
After directing two short films for Luc Moullet, she co-edited her feature debut for Godard with Lila Herman – Une femme est un femme. The film starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, and with its playful editing achieved by Guillemot, Godard clearly knew he’d found a collaborator to work with again. She soon edited Vivre sa vie with Godard’s assistance, which remains one of his finest-looking films. While Godard’s films are often known for jump cuts, Guillemot proved with Vivre sa vie that longer, quieter shots could also fit into his cinematic world just as well.
She continued to work with Godard over the years, lending her editing skills (whether solo or with another, typically female, editor) to movies like Contempt, Bande à part, Alphaville, Masculin Feminin, Made in USA, La Chinoise, and Weekend. Thus, Guillemot was a vital figure who helped to shape Godard’s signature cinematic style, but sadly, she hardly gets the credit for her contributions.
Throughout her career as an editor, Guillemot remained inspired by conductors, seeing herself as a conductor of a director’s (composer’s) work. “When I watched a film, I would treat it as I would a music manuscript – I would divide it into movements. I can tell you that timing the pieces made it obvious, allowed a dialogue with the director, showed them why it did not work – a question of rhythm.”
Guillemot then went on to work with Truffaut on movies like Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, Mississippi Mermaid, and The Wild Child. She found working with Truffaut rather different to her experience with Godard, explaining that “he said nothing, do what you like, disconcerting but exciting.” She admits that Truffaut preferred “cliché,” while Godard didn’t, which could sometimes be “difficult.” Still, Guillemot was able to use different editing styles while working on the respective filmmakers’ work, even if “some friends of Truffaut said, ‘but she is going to do a ‘Godard’,” which she called “completely idiotic.”
Guillemot was able to suit the needs of each filmmaker, and the result was an impressive ability to breathe the right kind of life into the scenes they’d each shot. “You could think of such and such a piece of music conducted by such and such a conductor, and you recognise the conductor’s hand. I have not written the music, but I conduct it,” she explained.
The editor went on to work with other filmmakers, too, like Jean-Charles Tacchella and Catherine Breillat, editing the latter’s Romance, one of her most accomplished and searing movies. Guillemot, who died in 2005, was not afraid to work with filmmakers who espoused radical ideas, both thematically and formally. Her natural musical impulses informed so many vital pieces of cinema, and it’s about time that more people know her name.
