Female film editors in the 1930s

Why editing

Of course, there were exceptions. There were two women in the prewar Netherlands who directed films: Caroline van Dommelen and Adriënne Solser. Van Dommelen had made her career as an actress; she directed three films in the early 10s. Revue artist Solser took a more ambitious approach: she set up her own production company and directed a number of film farces in the 1920s, the ‘Bet films’, where she also played the title role.
But they were exceptions. So women were not quick to come to work as directors.

Editing however had a lesser status, as it was seen as work with little artistic value. This is reflected in the credits: until the mid-1930s, the credits on the film reel were often limited to direction, production and camera - occasionally extended to include the name of the set designer.

And there were other factors at work in favour of women editors. Editing required patience and accuracy - qualities that were seen as typically feminine. More pragmatically, editing was labour-intensive i.e. expensive work, and not too physically demanding. Considering this, it is not surprising that women - a cheap labour force - gained a foothold in film editing relatively early.

This is not to say that there were no male editors: quite the contrary. The majority of Dutch feature films from the 1930s were edited by a man: Oscar van Leer, Harry Ankersmit and especially Jan Teunissen edited many feature films.

Sound film

By the mid-1930s, as the crews for feature films get bigger and more and more professions are listed in the credits, suddenly women's names start popping up: Lien d'Oliveyra, Hanna Kuijt, Friedel Buckow, Martha Dübber, Putty Krafft, Rita Roland, Helen van Dongen. All of them as editors.

In the same period, around 1934, the Netherlands ‘switches’ to sound film, which raises the bar for editors: they suddenly also have to deal with sound.

So where did these women learn their trade? Abroad - in Germany, often. Quite a few editors of Dutch feature films were German professionals: of Kuijt, Buckow, Dübber and Krafft, we know that they had been working in Germany as editors before coming to the Netherlands. Not much is known about Buckow, Dübber and Krafft in the Netherlands, and they eventually continued their careers in Germany.

Hanna Kuijt

A little more is known about Hanna Kuijt. She learnt the trade in Germany, even working as an editor on Leni Riefenstahl's Das blaue Licht (1932). Soon afterwards, Kuijt, who was Jewish, fled to the Netherlands. Here she was hired as an editor for De big van het regiment (1935). Taking up this position however made her the centre of a riot: when De big van het regiment went into production, the Nederlandse Vakvereeniging van Filmkunstenaars (NVF) protested because of alleged labour displacement by immigrants. Indeed, four foreign crew members were recruited for this film. Kuijt, as the fourth, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and suddenly became a symbol of the foreign - predominantly German - professionals working in Dutch feature films. However, producing company Monopole campaigned hard for Kuijt and eventually a compromise was found so that the film could begin.

In the space of about a year, Kuijt would work on at least three other Dutch feature films. But somehow, after that, her opportunities as an editor seemed to dry up. Going back to Germany was not an option. It seems she moved from one temporary job to another, while also supporting her mother. Hanna Kuijt was killed in extermination camp Sobibor in 1943.

Who is in the credits

Hanna Kuijt's name appeared, as Hanne Kuyt, in the credits of Das Blaue Licht when the film first came out in 1932. However, when this film was re-released later in the 1930s, the names of Jewish crewmembers - including Kuijt's - were removed from the credits.

Rita Roland

Rita Roland was married to director Hein Josephson and is believed to have only started working in the Netherlands as an editing assistant. After the war, the couple emigrated to the United States, where her career would take off. In 1977, she won an Emmy for editing Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years.

Helen van Dongen

Helen van Dongen initially started as a trade correspondent and secretary at photo supply shop CAPI, where she met Joris Ivens. Through him, she became involved in film making. In the early 1930s, she trained in editing and sound engineering, in Paris and Berlin. She remained professionally associated with Ivens for a long time: first in Russia, later in the United States. She built a great reputation as an editor - including with Ivens' The Spanish Earth (1937) and later as editor for American director Robert Flaherty. When she remarried an American journalist in 1950, she stopped her film work.

Lien d'Oliveyra

Lien d'Oliveyra had not happened upon editing by chance; she was the daughter of Adriënne Solser. She had more or less grown up in the studios where her mother's films were produced and did her first editing jobs around the age of twelve, on Bet, de koningin van de Jordaan (1924). So she probably already had quite a bit of experience when she was allowed to go to the internationally renowned studios of Babelsberg, near Berlin, for an internship. The timing was very fortunate: Babelsberg had just switched to sound film.

So when she returned to the Netherlands, she was suddenly among the sought-after group of editors who could edit sound film.

Since she is not mentioned in the credits of most of the silent films she edited before, she seems to appear almost out of nowhere as editor of Dood water (1934). After the war, she would become one of the most prominent editors in Dutch film of the 1950s. She also taught the first batch of students at the Netherlands Film Academy, founded in 1958.

Unsung heroes

Anyone looking at the credits of Dutch feature films from the 1930s will see that the crew consists of predominantly male names. The only exception is the editing category. But it was only well after the Second World War that the custom of simply listing everyone who participated in the production of a film emerged. So it is to be expected that the 1930s will still have a lot of unsung heroes and heroines of film editing.