10 Genius Edits That Totally Saved Movies
2. Non-Linear Editing Fixed The Narrative Flow - The Limey
Steven Soderbergh's 1999 crime film The Limey may have received rave reviews from critics, but it remains one of the greatest artistic challenges of the director's career, and is basically the textbook example of a movie that was saved in the edit.
The film has been widely celebrated for its radically non-linear editing style, which incorporates non-chronological images and sound throughout to explore the nature of memory.
However, this was a decision made only in post-production by Soderbergh and his editor Sarah Flack. The film was originally assembled as a conventionally structured narrative which, in Soderbergh's own words, didn't work at all:
"It wasn't written to be edited [non-linear], and it became apparent pretty quickly after we screened a linear version of the movie that that was not gonna float. This thing needed to just be rebuilt from scratch."
Soderbergh and Flack then got to work re-conceptualising the entire film in the editing room, cross-cutting between scenes in a deeply experimental fashion, and one which ultimately saved the film from a likely critical excoriation.
Star Terrence Stamp, who had signed onto and shot a rather different movie from what the final product turned out to be, was nevertheless extremely impressed with Soderbergh's creativity under fire:
"I was really taken aback, because I realised that Steven was like, kind of a genius. I really would have to put him up there with [William] Wyler and [Federico] Fellini."