{"id":352808,"date":"2025-08-17T23:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T23:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/352808\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T23:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T23:39:12","slug":"thelma-schoonmaker-toasts-michael-powell-during-edinburgh-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/352808\/","title":{"rendered":"Thelma Schoonmaker Toasts Michael Powell During Edinburgh Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cHow do you replace Robert De Niro\u2019s voice?\u201d veteran film editor Thelma Schoonmaker<\/a> remarked this evening during a lengthy Q&A session at the Edinburgh<\/a> Film Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe three-time Oscar-winner, who appeared at Edinburgh to discuss the work of her late husband, Michael Powell, used the rhetorical question to illustrate what she described as her frustration with the practice of sound dubbing on international film releases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just impossible,\u201d she said, answering her question.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of my problems as an editor is the dubbing that goes on when you send a film to Germany or France,\u201d she continued, describing the practice as \u201cpainful\u201d for her as an editor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSchoonmaker\u2019s remarks were part of a wider story she was telling the audience in Edinburgh about Michael Powell\u2019s impassioned belief in fostering a global cinema community that made films for an international audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSomebody once asked him, What do you think about the British film industry now? And he said, Why should there be a British film industry? We should make films for the world,\u201d Schoonmaker said of Powell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continued: \u201cHe felt that in the silent era, you could send a film to Japan, because silent films had a card in between shots telling you what had just happened. The Japanese could just translate that card, and the film remained exactly the same. Whereas when sound came in, Michael felt we lost something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSchoonmaker described Powell as a consummate optimist who never grew weary despite the difficulties he faced trying to raise cash for projects from 1960 onward, following the disastrous reception to his now-seminal feature Peeping Tom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe never became bitter, which I think is amazing. I think it\u2019s one of the great victories of his life that he never became bitter,\u201d Schoonmaker said of her late husband. \u201cHe kept on writing ideas for films and tried to sell them. He had almost 100 projects that he drove all over Europe trying to get made.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPowell died in 1990 in England after living in the U.S. for many years with Schoonmaker, whom he married in 1984. The pair was initially introduced by Martin Scorsese, who was largely responsible for igniting contemporary interest in the work Powell created with his longtime collaborator Emeric Pressburger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPowell and Pressburger collaborated on more than a dozen features, many of which are considered to be some of the best films ever produced on British shores. The list includes The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and Black Narcissus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot one British director came to his funeral,\u201d Schoonmaker said of the time after Powell\u2019s death. \u201cBernardo Bertolucci came, and Martin Scorsese flew across the Atlantic to be there and threw the first club of dirt on Michael\u2019s grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added: \u201cTheir friendship was remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Edinburgh Film Festival<\/a> runs until August 20. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHow do you replace Robert De Niro\u2019s voice?\u201d veteran film editor Thelma Schoonmaker remarked this evening during a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,123512,4884,712,124539,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-352808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-edinburgh-film-festival","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-scotland","13":"tag-thelma-schoonmaker","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115046748307292625","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}