Hollywood film editing remains on the theoretical margins of contemporary film scholarship, and the cause of this is three-fold. First, despite advances in collaborative authorship studies, the Hollywood film director is still largely regarded as the sole creative lynchpin upon which the film’s success or failure ultimately lies. Second, Classical Hollywood film editing—commonly referred to as the continuity aesthetic—is considered successful if it remains unnoticed, if it remains invisible. Therefore, within this continuity aesthetic, the editor’s ultimate goal is to hide his or her own labor. Third, determining exactly how and where a film editor contributed to a film text during post-production is an incredibly difficult task. So, what is the solution? This dissertation explores how film archives can contribute to knowledge about the cinematic post-production process. My central research questions are: what kinds of information do film archives contain regarding the creative collaboration between the director and the editor? And, what does available archive material tell us about the changes and creative revisions in post-production? To answer these questions, I conducted original archival research on the following Hollywood Renaissance films: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Conversation (1974), Annie Hall (1977), and Raging Bull (1980). These films reflect a highly creative era in the Hollywood industry and are well-known for the collaborative relationship between the directors and the editors. To determine how and where collaborative authorship occurred in these films, I compared archival documents such as the storyboards and shooting scripts to the final film texts. These documents contain explicit instructions about how the scenes should be lit, decorated, and shot and how the film itself should be edited together. Therefore, I argue that any editing discrepancies between these documents and the final films were the result of a creative collaboration between the director and the editor. Ideally, this model of “script-to-screen” archival research will inspire other academics to investigate how and where a film’s creative revision occurs during post-production—and to what effect. / text

En 1967, sous l’influence du jeune cinéma européen, Hollywood accède à son tour à la modernité : le « Vieil Hollywood » laisse place à un « Nouvel Hollywood ». Ce mouvement de renouvellement du cinéma américain, symboliquement inauguré par Bonnie and Clyde d’Arthur Penn et Le lauréat de Mike Nichols, est, explique-t-on, le fait d’une génération nouvelle de cinéastes, parmi lesquels, outre Penn et Nichols, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, William Friedkin,Michael Cimino, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Bob Rafelson, Hal Ashby... Il est aussi le fait d’une génération nouvelle de monteurs, qui, en complicité avec leurs réalisateurs, éprouvèrent de nouvelles formes d’expressivité esthétique et narrative, sans craindre de contrevenir aux règles conventionnelles instituées par leurs aînés ; parfois même en réaction contre ces règles. On peut notamment citer, parmi ces fidèles et précieux collaborateurs, Dede Allen, Walter Murch, Sam O’Steen, Verna Fields, Alan Heim, Paul Hirsch, Robert C. Jones, Richard Marks, ou encore Ralph Rosenblum. Nous veillons à déterminer, dans cette thèse, la part de responsabilité, tant collective qu’individuelle, de cette nouvelle génération de monteurs dans le mouvement de renouvellement esthétique du cinéma américain. Et, au-delà des personnes, d’apprécier ce style de montage néohollywoodien, d’évaluer son importance dans la constitution du style neuf des films américains des années 1970, de même que l’étendue de ses innovations. / In 1967, under the influence of European art films, Hollywood underwent important changes in the course of the 1960s : « Old Hollywood » was taken over by a « New Hollywood ». This process of renewal of American cinema, which has been symbolically launched by Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, is due, it has been said, to the arrival of a new – mostly film-school educated – generation of filmmakers, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma,George Lucas, William Friedkin, Michael Cimino, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Bob Rafelson or Hal Ashby. It is also due to the arrival of a new generation of film editors who did not fear to challenge the doctrine of classical Hollywood editing and break the established rules in order to take a chance and try new ways of telling a story. These films editors are, amongst others, Dede Allen, Walter Murch, Sam O’Steen, Verna Fields, Alan Heim, Paul Hirsch, Robert C. Jones, Richard Marks, or Ralph Rosenblum. Our thesis examines the share of responsability, on both a collective and individual level, of this new generation of film editors in this process of renewal of American cinema in the 1960s and 1970’s. Its goal is, more generally, to determine and appreciate this new editing style, realize its importance and its influence on the Hollywood Renaissance style, as well as the wide range of its innovations.