JIM CLARK
(24 May 1931 - 1 March 2016)
The unassuming name of Jim Clark was, however, an important one for the British film industry in that this celebrated editor was probably responsible for the success of more iconic movies than you could shake a mic boom at. For instance, Clark edited many high-profile films: two by Jack Clayton, The Innocents and The Pumpkin Eater, two by Roland Joffé, The Killing Fields and The Mission, two by Mike Leigh, Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky, three by Michael Caton-Jones, Memphis Belle, This Boy’s Life and The Jackal, and six by John Schlesinger, Darling, Far From the Madding Crowd, Marathon Man, The Day of the Locust, Yanks and Honky Tonk Freeway – and he also acted as creative consultant on Midnight Cowboy. Clark had worked with Franco Zeffirelli on Young Toscanini and with Stanley Donen on Surprise Package, The Grass Is Greener and Charade, plus three films by Michael Apted, Agatha, Nell and – last but not least – The World Is Not Enough, from the 007 franchise.
Jim Clark was obviously a man in great demand because he was a superb technician and undoubtedly saved many a film from ruin, thereby enhancing the reputations of his masters. Early on in his career, in the 1950s, he was taken on by Ealing Studios where he was an editor on The Love Lottery and The Ladykillers and a sound editor for The Cruel Sea, after which Stanley Donen set him on the road to success. Clark’s first important contribution was to The Innocents, a film of the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Both Freddie Francis’s brilliant black and white photography and Clark’s skilled editing added immensely to the ghostly feeling of its horrific subject. From then on Clark could do no wrong and in a career that covered over forty features, some shorts and documentaries, he became one of the best editors in the business, right up to his last film, Happy-Go-Lucky for Mike Leigh in 2008, after which he retired, age 77.
A great editor does not, however, necessarily make a great director and, although Clark directed three features in the early 1970s (two comedies, Every Home Should Have One and Rentadick and a Vincent Price horror flick, Madhouse) these are not the films for which he will be remembered. Jim Clark won a Best Film Editing Oscar and a Bafta Award for The Killing Fields, plus a Bafta for The Mission while American Cinema Editors USA gave him their Career Achievement Award in 2005. Clark published his autobiography, Dream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing in 2011,
MICHAEL DARVELL