It is a weird thing, really. You spend two hours in a dark theater, eyes glued to a screen, yet you rarely think about the person who decided exactly when a character should blink or when a car chase should cut to a close-up. That is the magic of editing. It is supposed to be invisible. But Howard Berry’s documentary Her Name Was Moviola decides to make the invisible visible by looking backward at a time when "cutting" a movie meant literally using a blade.
The title sounds like a love letter, and in many ways, it is. The Moviola was the workhorse of Hollywood for decades. It was a loud, clunky, green upright machine that allowed editors to see their film on a tiny screen while the audio played back. If you’ve ever seen behind-the-scenes footage from the 1970s, you’ve seen one. It looks like a cross between a sewing machine and a tractor.
The Physicality of the Cut
We live in a world of Premiere Pro and Avid. You hit a button, you undo a mistake, you render a file. It’s clean. It’s digital. Her Name Was Moviola reminds us that editing used to be a physical, tactile, and frankly messy profession.
Howard Berry, the director, didn't just want to talk about the old days. He wanted to document the process before the people who knew how to do it were gone. He brought together legendary editor Anne V. Coates—the woman who edited Lawrence of Arabia—and her longtime assistant, Richard Marden. They weren't just reminiscing. They were working.
The documentary captures a specific experiment: taking a scene from a modern production and editing it using the old-school "cut and splice" method. No "Undo" button. No digital bins. Just strips of celluloid hanging in a canvas-lined basket. You had to know where your shots were. If you lost a frame, it was gone. You’d be down on your hands and knees on the floor, looking for a three-inch strip of film that contained the most important reaction shot of the movie.
Why the Moviola Changed Everything
Before the Moviola, editing was almost impossible to do with precision. Invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924, it was originally intended as a home movie projector. Nobody wanted to buy a tiny projector for their living room, though. It was too expensive. But film studios realized they could use it to view film as they edited it.
The machine changed the rhythm of cinema. Suddenly, editors could see the performance in motion. They could match the movement of an actor’s hand from one angle to another.
In Her Name Was Moviola, we see how the machine dictated the pace of the room. The sound of the Moviola is a rhythmic clack-clack-clack. It’s industrial. Editors like Coates talk about the machine almost like a dance partner. You had to feed it, thread it, and listen to it. If the machine sounded wrong, the film was probably tearing.
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The Lost Art of Waiting
There’s a section in the film that really sticks with you. It’s about the time it took to make a decision.
In modern editing, we try ten different versions of a scene in ten minutes. In the days of the Moviola, making a cut meant committing. You had to be sure. You had to think about the scene while you were physically walking to the bin to find the film. You thought about it while you were scraping the emulsion off the edge of the strip to apply the glue.
That "forced thinking time" is something many veteran editors feel is missing today. When things are too fast, you lose the "why" behind the cut.
Anne V. Coates and the Legend of the Match Cut
You cannot talk about Her Name Was Moviola without talking about Anne V. Coates. She is the backbone of the documentary. Watching her interact with the physical film is like watching a master tailor handle silk. She knows exactly how much a frame is worth.
She’s famous for the "match cut" in Lawrence of Arabia—where Peter O'Toole blows out a match and it cuts to the sun rising over the desert. That wasn't a digital trick. That was a physical alignment of two pieces of film. In the documentary, her presence serves as a bridge between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the digital present. She died not long after the film was made, which makes the footage of her working the Moviola even more poignant. It is a record of a disappearing skill set.
The Assistant’s Burden
The film also shines a light on the Assistant Editor. Today, an assistant manages metadata and organizes folders. On a Moviola set, the assistant was a librarian of physical objects.
Imagine thousands of tiny strips of film. Each one has a number. Each one has a specific place in a bin. If the assistant messed up the filing system, the whole production ground to a halt. Richard Marden’s role in the film shows the sheer amount of organization required. It wasn't just artistic; it was clerical work on a massive, high-stakes scale.
Technology vs. Craft
Is the movie just a nostalgia trip? No.
It’s an argument for the "hand-made" quality of art. When you watch the film, you realize that the limitations of the Moviola actually helped create the language of cinema. Because it was hard to cut, editors only cut when it was necessary. This created a specific kind of pacing—a slower, more deliberate build-up—that we often miss in the rapid-fire editing of modern blockbusters.
The documentary doesn't say digital is bad. That would be silly. Digital editing is a miracle. But it does suggest that something was lost when we stopped touching the film. There’s a "happy accident" factor that happens when you’re handling physical media. You might see a frame in the bin that you didn't intend to use, and suddenly the scene changes for the better.
What Most People Get Wrong About Film History
People think the transition to digital happened overnight. It didn't.
Many editors held onto their Moviolas well into the 1990s. Steven Spielberg famously stayed with film editing for as long as possible. There was a fear that the "soul" of the movie would evaporate if it became just ones and zeros. Her Name Was Moviola captures that soul. It shows that a movie isn't just a file; it’s a series of moments that someone had to physically stitch together.
The Moviola was eventually replaced by the Flatbed editor (like the Steenbeck), which was quieter and faster, and then by the Avid. But for a huge chunk of movie history—from The Wizard of Oz to Star Wars—the Moviola was the king.
Getting Into the Documentary
If you're a film student, this is mandatory viewing. Honestly.
But even if you're just a fan of movies, it changes how you look at the screen. You start to see the labor. You realize that every time the camera angle changes, a human being made a choice, likely while standing in a room smelling of chemicals and old tape, listening to the roar of a green machine.
The film is a bit technical at times. It doesn't hold your hand. It assumes you care about the difference between a 16mm and a 35mm frame. And that's okay. We need more documentaries that treat the audience like they have an attention span.
Actionable Insights for Film Enthusiasts
If you want to appreciate the legacy of the Moviola and the craft shown in the documentary, here is how to dive deeper:
- Watch for the "Blink": Next time you watch a classic film (pre-1990), look for the cuts. Try to feel the rhythm. You can almost sense the physical "thump" of the edit.
- Research the "Rule of Six": Walter Murch, another legendary editor, wrote a book called In the Blink of an Eye. It’s a perfect companion to this documentary. He talks about why we cut and how it relates to human psychology.
- Look for the Lab Marks: In some older films, if you look closely at the very edge of the frame, you can sometimes see the slight artifacts of a physical splice. It’s the thumbprint of the editor.
- Support Film Preservation: Organizations like the Film Foundation or the BFI work to keep these physical prints alive. Without them, the history documented in Her Name Was Moviola would just be a memory.
The documentary isn't just about a machine. It's about the fact that art requires friction. Sometimes, the harder it is to make something, the better it ends up being. The Moviola provided that friction. It forced editors to be sure of themselves. And in doing so, it helped build the greatest stories ever told on screen.