A & E

Now it's about minuscule attention spans. It's ruining movies, or at least diminishing what should be the best parts.

We're talking about editing here - the precise selection and arrangement of exposed motion picture film stock, at 24 frames per second, to enhance emotion and increase momentum within movie scenes.

"Take the Lead" is only the latest example of hundreds of movies that are pieced together in a way that makes it impossible to appreciate the highlights - in this case pure dance.

Two unforgettably egregious examples in the past quarter century of MTV-style editing pummeling the natural life out of musical sequences were "Staying Alive" (1983) and "Moulin Rouge" (2001).

Despite being a sequel to the superbly lighted and photographed "Saturday Night Fever," "Staying Alive," in which Sylvester Stallone directed John Travolta, sliced every dance sequence into slivers in which bodies hurtled through space air in preposterous variants on slo-mo martial arts fantasies.

Music, singing (where applicable), choreography and dancing are great crafts that, when performed well, do not or should not require the crutches of heavy-duty splicing.

Baz Luhrmann's '01 re-do of "Moulin Rouge" was staged on some of the most sumptuous sets in decades, and with costumes, cinematography and choreography that seemed to be worth inspecting. But the obsessive artificial insemination of energy into the picture through hyper editing resulted in a movie that was difficult to appreciate even as eye candy.

The great stage director-choreographer Bob Fosse, who died Sept. 23, 1987, at age 60, directed just five movies, all of them outstanding. Three were three musicals ("Sweet Charity," "Cabaret," "All That Jazz") and two penetrating dramas ("Lenny," "STAR 80").

Fosse, as director, and David Bretherton, as editor, both won Oscars for "Cabaret" in which the songs were cut rhythmically.

"Flashdance," the closest thing to a big-screen music video at the time, carried quick editing to such an extreme that leading lady Jennifer Beals, playing a welder who aspired to be a dancer, did not even do her own dancing. Dance was achieved by the razor splicing of three women's movements - Crazy Legs, Sharon Shapiro and especially Marine Jahan. Some concept: ghost dancers.

Anyone who loves dance musicals knows that the best work of Fred Astaire ("Swing Time," "Top Hat"), Gene Kelly ("An American in Paris," "Singin' in the Rain") and their many partners and contemporaries were shot in long takes and full frame so that the relationship of moving bodies were enveloped by space in a way that accented grace and agility.

"West Side Story" (1961) altered the use of editing in a musical but so effectively it became THE classic, the touchstone for dance on film.

It's so hard to follow the dancers frame by frame in "Take the Lead" that I suspect most of the actors had dance doubles.

Fosse's use of cutting was brilliant, but he inspired decades of hacks with scissors and chainsaws who collectively and systematically have shortened the attention span of millions of moviegoers. Movies have become the cinematic equivalent of fast food.

In a 1983 interview, Fosse admitted: "I have reservations about `Staying Alive' being cut to the rhythm of the movie, never showing us a sustained piece of dance. With Astaire and Kelly, there was virtually no cutting. I know. That was how I started in movies, too.

"I have very mixed feelings about ... what's happening now. I think I was one of the first people to use quick cutting and not show the full figure. I would not say it was my idea because I was greatly influenced by John Huston's `Moulin Rouge' (the 1952 version).

"Huston used a lot of closeups in shooting the cancan, and it seemed to make you feel inside the dance rather than outside like a theater audience. So I carried that technique further in most of the things I've been involved in.

"I'm embarrassed to say that what's happening now is part of my doing. I think it's being carried to the extreme where it's not interesting anymore."

Editing overpowers so many wide-release multiplex movies now it's harder to study a performance - that is, a characterization, much less interactive acting in which you're seeing performers speak and listen concurrently.

It's certainly harder to luxuriate in superior cinematography, art decoration and set decoration.

Even the contours of faces are being sacrificed. What we're losing most vitally, though, is the thought process in progress. When impatience takes the form of a butterfly's attention span, everything suffers.

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News