The love for editing - an interview with Halina Prugar-Ketling – Polish Film Festival

Her memories have faded over time, but she remembers one situation as if it had happened yesterday. She still sees a boy that had been shot. She tries to save his life with all her might, she pours water from the nearby well over him but blood won’t stop flowing from his stomach riddled with holes.

“He died the next day”, she reminisces. “I made a terrible mistake, I will never forgive myself.”

She has never asked for distinctions for participating in the Warsaw Uprising.

She felt embarrassed because she couldn’t save that boy.

Wasps in soup

Aleksander Ford was the first person to discover her talent. He came to the company straight from Five from Barska Street set. The director had so much footage that he decided to edit it into two film versions - from first takes and the second negative, that is, the chosen retakes.

A version made of footage that  would usually be considered scraps or cull made its way onto the big screen.

A few years later, Ford suggested she edit Knights of the Teutonic Order but she had to refuse because of her pregnancy. However, her job meant a lot to Ford, so much in fact that he promised he would bring her mother and the rest of her family to the film set. Everything as long as she did this film with him.

Yet she didn’t refuse another project, which a moment later gave her better career prospects. At a camping site in Mikołajki, she edited a film by an unknown debutante. The editing table occupied one half of the cabin, the other served as headquarters.

Romek, when she mentions him, would come to her each Sunday. She would prepare dinner while he would use a ladle to catch all wasps that had flown into the soup.

That is how Knife in the Water was made.

Romek was kind and funny, both when he did editing and when he did the sound in Wrocław. He did all of the effects and postsync by himself. In the scene, where Niemczyk hits Malanowicz in the face, he took off his shoes and hit them against each other.

During the shooting he could behave like a totally different person. He gave Jolanta Umecka the leading role, even though she is a musicologist. He spotted her at Legia Swimming Pool, when she was jumping into the water.

“He would shout at her and she had no idea how to behave in front of the camera”, says Halina.

When speaking about herself, she mentions being both mad at and about her work. When in the middle of the night she would realise that she is not satisfied with something, her husband would drive her to the editing room, where she would sit all by herself until the morning. 

I have been Wajda’s editor

The most, she highlights whenever she can, she owes to a meeting with Wajda. They were introduced to each other by Jerzy Lipman, with whom she had previously worked on Ford’s film.

They were about to make Love at Twenty.

Never before had she felt so good while working with somebody. Wajda would from time to time pop into the editing room. He wouldn’t breathe down her neck like the others. He would come there only to check if there’s anything to add.

In the past, when a director would sit with her in the editing room, and, God forbid, mark where the tape should be cut, she couldn’t bear it. She would get up, say “thank you” and leave. Apparently, she said to Janusz Morgenstern: “I won’t cut it, cut it yourself, sir.”

Twice she got footage from Wajda not knowing that it was incomplete. She edited what she had and Wajda seeing the effect would say: “There is nothing to add even though it is just a half, and we didn’t finish the shooting!” A situation like this happened during the shooting of the scene of the factory opening from The Promised Land  and the ending itself. Both were fully her idea. Wajda, when he didn’t have good footage ready, would call Halina and beg: “Come up with something”.

The crew often shot outside Warsaw, she would edit in it. Sometimes she would call them saying that some scenes lack takes on a hand or face. She would sometimes request additional content and Wajda would always agree with her remarks. No other editor during that time had this much to say.

“Editing isn’t a creative job, says Mrs. Prugar - Ketling, but is a supplementary-creative one.” Asked about tools used by editors at job, she replies “eyes”. Visual memory and an ability to associate things are needed first and foremost. She would know right from the start, what to pick and  reject from given footage. She could edit the same scene in a few different ways.

She was the most surprised when Wajda called and asked about which actors he should cast. Editors usually don’t give advice on such a matter. She suggested that he cast Małgorzata Trybała as a Jewish woman in his film Landscape After Battle. Eventually, the actress refused since she didn’t want to appear naked in front of the camera.

Good actors were left in the whole footage, the ones slightly worse were cut from some of it. By editing Everything for Sale she noticed that Beata Tyszkiewicz’s acting was rather mediocre, so she cut her scenes out. Later, when Wajda asked “Why so little of Beatka on the screen?”, Mrs. Prugar-Ketling didn’t beat about the bush and said “Because she’s not the best. Daniel, however, is excellent and we are doing this film on him”.

The Wedding has caused her the most problems during her entire career. The pace of work was settled by the music playing continually from speakers on the set. During the editing, one had to constantly monitor the rhythm. Censorship was another problem. She had to cut out many dialogue lines, including “What’s happening in the politics right now, sir?” and “The Chinese hold on tight”. The Wedding was shot not long after March of the ‘68 and the December of the ‘70. At the same time, a cultural revolution was taking place in China.

On 24^th September at 1:00pm, on Chamber Stage in the Danuta Baduszkowa Musical Theatre in Gdynia, a masterclass dedicated to Halina Prugar-Ketling’s work will take place. Łukasz Knap, a film critic, and an editor Rafał Listopad, will take a look into this year’s laureate of the Platinum Lions work from a biographical, artistic and workshop perspective. They will talk about her life, her methods, the style of her editing and the special role she played in shaping the language of Polish cinema. Even though Halina Prugar-Ketling herself will be absent, masterclass will be a form of meeting with her voice, experience and work. The meeting will be accompanied by fragments from the most important films she had edited.