Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/790371
20 CINEMONTAGE / Q1 2017 right after we saw an early cut, but all [we] really cared about was the [Alvy and Annie] relationship," Bricmont observes. "That's what rose to the surface and that's what we had to start to pay attention to. You didn't care about Carol Kane that much. You didn't care about some of the people who barely made it into the [final] cut." Thus began the process of winnowing Annie Hall to its eventual length of 93 minutes. After preparing the first cut on a Moviola, Rosenblum and Bricmont — along with assistant editor Susan E. Morse, ACE, who was soon to supplant Rosenblum (who died in 1995) as Allen's regular editor — moved to a Steenbeck. "That was my opportunity to affect, under [Rosenblum's] supervision, a lot of the changes," says Bricmont, whose credit changed as a result. "That's how I got that film editing credit." Because most of the soon-to-be-removed scenes played well, and many were funny or at least interesting, Bricmont says the prospect of removing them was painful. "It's not so hard to lose things in post-production when they're not working," she says. "But they all worked. It's just that we couldn't have them all in there." However, having identified the through line in the ebbs and flows of Alvy and Annie's relationship, the editors had to be merciless about trimming superfluous scenes. As Rosenblum wrote, "The more we became involved in the plot of the relationship, the more we had to prune." As Bricmont remembers it, however, Allen was sanguine about having his film reshaped. "It was amazing to see how he gradually and willingly let these things go — especially being the writer, director and actor," she says. "Today, when you deal with directors, sometimes it takes weeks of massaging for them to let go of certain things." As an example of Allen's readiness to discard material, Bricmont remembers one scene filmed in Coney Island which featured 400 extras and took an entire day to prepare. "I heard that they did not roll any film until 4:00 in the afternoon," she says. "They got this gorgeous, gorgeous shot, and it was one of the first things to go. He threw it out so easily." Rosenblum reported that Allen struggled to find a fitting finale for the film, which had changed so substantially in the cutting room. "Several conclusions were shot," Rosenblum wrote, but in the end, the editor encouraged the director to write a voiceover to complement the opening monologue MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Wendy Greene Bricmont working on Annie Hall in 1977. Annie Hall. United Artists/Photofest