Jim Clark | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Clark (1931-05-24)24 May 1931 Boston, Lincolnshire, England |
| Died | 25 February 2016(2016-02-25) (aged 84) London, England |
| Education | Oundle School |
| Occupation(s) | Editor, director[1] |
| Notable work | The Killing Fields[1] The Jackal[1] The World Is Not Enough[1] |
| Spouse | |
| Awards | Academy Award for Film Editing (1985)[2] BAFTA Award for Best Editing (1986)[2] |
Jim Clark (24 May 1931 – 25 February 2016) was a British film editor and film director. He has more than forty feature film credits between 1956 and 2008. Clark directed four feature films along with a handful of short films. Notably, he served as a creative consultant forMidnight Cowboy (1969). His most noted editing credits includedMarathon Man (1976),The Killing Fields (1984), andVera Drake (2004). In 2011, Clark publishedDream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing, a memoir of his career.[1][3]
Clark was born in 1931, and grew up inBoston, Lincolnshire. He was educated atOundle School inNorthamptonshire and founded the Oundle Film Society in 1947.
Clark moved to London, and in 1951 began work as an assistant editor atEaling Studios. Subsequently he worked as a freelance assistant editor on two films directed byStanley Donen and edited byJack Harris.[4] When Harris declined the opportunity to work on Donen's subsequent film,Surprise Package (1960), Donen gave Clark the job. As Clark later wrote,
It was a fairly bad movie and probably would have finished my career before it had started, but luckily Stanley got another film,The Grass Is Greener (1960), which he also asked me to edit. The cutting of the two films overlapped, which was great training for me. Soon after, I was asked to cutThe Innocents (1961) starringDeborah Kerr, which has since become a classic story-driven, supernatural horror film. It was very hard to cut, but that film really put me on the map.[5]
He received anAcademy Award and aBAFTA Award for the editing ofThe Killing Fields (1984, directed byRoland Joffé); he received a second BAFTA Award for editingThe Mission (1986, Joffé). Clark was also nominated for BAFTA Awards for his editing of the filmsMarathon Man (1976, directed byJohn Schlesinger) andVera Drake (2004, directed byMike Leigh). In 2005, Clark received theAmerican Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award.
Responding to a question about the major influences on his editing, Clark said
Looking back over many years, the American cinema of the 40s was very important to me, along withHitchcock films and early British comedies with actors likeWill Hay andGeorge Formby. Music has also played a major role; it influences the rhythm of my editing. The pacing of a film and its dialogue have a lot to do with music, and the act of going from one shot to another has always fascinated me - when and how you do it, the reason for an edit.[5]
As a director he was responsible forThe Christmas Tree (1966),Every Home Should Have One (1970),Rentadick (1972) andMadhouse (1974).
Clark lived inKensington with his wife Laurence Méry-Clark, likewise a film and television editor. They married in 1961 and had three children.[1] Clark's autobiographyDream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing was published in 2011,[6] receiving warm reviews fromThe Guardian andThe Observer.[7][8]
As director
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