The Woman with Scissors and Glue: Film Editing and Radical Montage in Weimar Cinema

Abstract

This article examines the role of the female film editor in the production of German silent cinema, turning to the depiction of editing in a little-known short comedy from 1926, Wenn die Filmkleberin gebummelt hat (When the Film Editor Dawdled, dir. O. F. Mauer), also known as Tragödie einer Uraufführung (Tragedy of a World Premiere). This film, about a distracted editor who mixes revue film and newsreel footage to produce an avant-garde montage film, hands authority over the film to the editor while suggesting that the film she has produced is simply a mistake. Situating the film within discourse on silent-film production practices and Weimar-era montage techniques, the article uses the film as a magnifying glass through which to consider female labor and its relationship to mediation and aesthetic form. It shows how the film offers a remarkable—and relatively early—feminist theory of montage as disruption that hinges on unruly women workers.