The vital importance of Martin Scorsese’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker
The film industry has famously erased women, rarely highlighting the talents of those who aren’t in front of the camera. It took the Academy Awards 83 years to give a woman a Best Director accolade, which has only been won twice in its 96-year history. Furthermore, 2021 was the first year more than one woman was nominated in the Best Director category – Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell joining the list, respectively.
Although Hollywood is slowly making progress in allowing female filmmakers to receive the credits they deserve, there needs to be more light shone on women in other behind-the-scenes roles, such as the crucial cinematic realms of cinematography and editing. In 2019, a website called Edited By was created by Su Friedrich, an experimental filmmaker, who highlighted the unfair invisibility given to female editors, whose work is always significantly overshadowed by male directors, writers, and even producers. Although there is a case to be made that both male and female editors are overlooked by Hollywood’s brightest lights, the lack of attention given to the sheer number of women that have edited major motion pictures speaks to the industry’s more significant problem of female erasure. Friedrich writes: “It’s time to stop imagining that ‘it’s really the director’ who does the editing.”
With that, some movie-goers might be shocked to discover that behind some of the most successful and influential male-directed films are female editors, such as Dede Allen (Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon) and Verna Fields (Jaws, American Graffiti), both of whom are relatively unknown names, even to dedicated cinema lovers.
Martin Scorsese, one of the most well-respected and influential working directors, is responsible for creating critically-acclaimed works such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Irishman. Yet, behind all of his films from 1980 onwards (with the exception of 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door?) is editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Despite the seven Oscar nominations and three wins – and the three trophies sat on her mantlepiece – Schoonmaker remains a highly underrepresented name. When we consider the iconic fight scene in Raging Bull, we praise Robert De Niro’s acting and Martin Scorsese’s direction, but never Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing.
Instead, the editing is typically praised without any thought given to the person responsible. Yet Schoonmaker’s editing transforms the scene into something extraordinary, bringing the cast and crew’s work an added layer of life. During an interview with Wide Angle/Close-Up, the editor stated: “If you look at those fight sequences, those were so incredibly storyboarded and shot in an incredible way — that is the conception a good director has to bring.” Indeed this is true, but the scene comes together so well because of Schoonmaker’s attentive eye for editing.
Schoonmaker summed up, albeit very humbly, why her skills are so crucial to Scorsese’s films in an interview with Nick Pinkerton: “There’s a great deal of mystery in film editing, and that’s because you’re not supposed to see a lot of it. You’re supposed to feel that a film has pace and rhythm and drama, but you’re not necessarily supposed to be worried about how that was accomplished. And because there is so little understanding of what really great editing is, a film that’s flashy, has a lot of quick cuts and explosions, gets particular attention.”
She continued: “For example, with The Aviator, which I won an Oscar for—I’m sure that decision was based largely on the very elaborate plane crash that Howard Hughes had. That’s so dramatic, and you can really see the editing there, but for me, and for a lot of editors and directors, the more interesting editing is not so visible. It’s the decisions that go into building a character, a performance, for example, or how you rearrange scenes in a movie if it’s not working properly so that you can get a better dramatic build.”
Schoonmaker is a massive source of inspiration for other aspiring female editors. Jennifer Lame, Noah Baumbach’s go-to editor, has declared her love for Schoonmaker, calling her a “North Star for so many editors — both inspiring and guiding with her amazing career. What I love so much about her is that although she is wildly talented and influential, she remains completely ego-less.”
Lame states that Schoonmaker “always reiterates the importance of collaboration and making the director’s vision come alive.” Indeed, through continual collaboration, Schoonmaker and Scorsese have become one of the greatest director-editing duos in cinema.
