COLLIN, FRANÇOISE

Françoise Collin

Born 1937

“Chronique d’un été”—“Chronicle of a Summer” — with her name misspelled.

Françoise Collin began working in 1961 as a co-editor (with Jean Ravel and Néna Baratier) of Chronique d’un été/Chronicle of a Summer, the landmark film by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin. Between then and 2006, she amassed thirty-two credits for both narratives and documentaries. Her collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard began in 1964 as a co-editor (with Dahlia Ezove and Agnès Guillemot) of Bande à part/Band of Outsiders. Following this, she was co-editor of Une femme mariée/A Married Woman (with Andrée Choty, Agnès Guillemot and Gérard Pollicand). Collin was sole editor of Godard’s next film, Pierrot le Fou and then co-editor of Made in U.S.A. (with Agnès Guillemot) and co-editor of 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle/Two or Three Things I Know About Her (with Chantal Delattre).
Collin continued editing with numerous other directors, including Jean Aurel, Pierre Koralnik, José Varela, Anna Karina and François Dupeyron. Between 1999-2005, she edited three films for Philippe Garrel (Le vent de la nuit/Night Wind, Sauvage innocence/Wild Innocence and Les amants réguliers/The Regular Lovers). When Collin cut Histoire naturelle for the director and actress Ysé Tran in 2006, it was the culmination of an editing career that lasted forty-four years.
There is also one listing on the (often unreliable) internet of a documentary from 2011, Rua Diamantina Rosa, that lists her as the director but I haven’t found any other evidence to support it, and a different website spells the director’s name as Coullin.

Note: You can read more about the seventeen women editors who collaborated with Jean Rouch here.

There isn’t a single photograph of Collin to be found in any archive or anywhere online. One can find images online, but they’re all of a same-named French philosopher. So here instead is the screen credit from her first film—above, in which her name is misspelled —and one from a later film.

It’s notable here that she gets a credit on the poster. Often they only list the DP and the composer, in addition to the director and the actors.

DECUGIS, CÉCILE

Cécile Decugis

1934 – 2017

After making two short films, Cécile Decugis became the assistant editor to Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte on Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. She then edited Godard’s Breathless and Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (co-edited with Claudine Bouché), putting her in the same company as Agnès Guillemot, who also edited films for both directors. In 1960 she was arrested for renting an apartment to National Liberation Front militants* and spent two years in La Roquette prison. Decugis became the main editor for Éric Rohmer in 1969 and from then until 1983 she edited nine of his films, including My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee (co-edited by Christine Lecouvette), Chloe in the Afternoon and Pauline at the Beach. She mentored Mary Stephen, who edited later Rohmer films. Decugis has thirty editing credits. In 2011, at age 77, she reworked a 1957 documentary film about Algerian refugees in Tunisia and rereleased it as Bread Distribution.

*The NLF supported the Algerian war of independence from France.

“Truffaut rarely came into the cutting room because he did not like it very much, whereas you could not imagine a film of Godard’s being edited without him being present. Rohmer was there all the time because he did not like you to work a scene or even a shot without him being present…
When we went to the first screening [of Shoot the Piano Player], Truffaut was very happy. It did not change because there were not many ways to cut it. I hate the term “first cut” because you should always be cutting to make it work. I do not think you should be doing bad cutting. After this “first cut” of course you will make some modifications. In New Wave films the cutting style was not planned in advance. They had a concept of what the style would be and they worked from a script, but they did not know in advance exactly where the cuts would be made. They would have been against being so pre-planned. This is not to say that we were going into the cutting room to find and create something new. The concept of editing was part of the whole film like the style of the shoot and the acting. The editing does not exist in isolation. Sometimes in the cutting room you discover an innovation or you put right problems with the cut. However, in general what happens in the cutting room is a reflection of the film.”

“They [Truffaut and Godard] were against conformity in French cinema. What we cut had to be as alive as possible, appearing spontaneous rather than worked out. Although often, that which appears most natural can require the most reflection. Truffaut was not so much interested in editing, rather he was interested in the idea of the film in general. He would return from a screening and say, “That particular scene is too long, you need to shorten it.” He was fantastic with the overview of the film, but he got bored working with the detail. Godard on the other hand was incredible with cutting. For him cinema defined itself by editing, for Godard cinema is editing.”
—Two excerpts from an interview with Decugis in “Editing and Post-Production Screencraft” by Declan McGrath. The full interview can be found in the Appendix.