Françoise Bonnot

Françoise Bonnot (born 1939) is a French film editor with more than 40 feature film credits.^[3]

Bonnot is the daughter of Monique Bonnot, a film editor noted for several films directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. In her first film credit, Françoise Bonnot was the assistant to her mother on Melville's 1959 film, Two Men in Manhattan (1959). She and her mother co-edited the 1962 film, A Monkey in Winter, that was directed by Henri Verneuil. At about this time Bonnot married Verneuil; she edited three more of his films in the 1960s. Bonnot edited Melville's 1969 film, Army of Shadows, when her mother became unavailable. This film is about the French resistance fighters during the Second World War, and was a departure from Melville's more characteristic crime and detective films. Bonnot later remarked that Melville “... had known me since I was eight years old. It was like working with my big brother. He was a character––fascinating, charming, fun and tyrannical.”^[4]

By 1968, Bonnot had commenced her notable collaboration with director Costa-Gavras that extended over eight films and nearly 30 years. Their first film together was Z (1969); James Berardinelli has written recently that, "Z was the third feature film from Greek-born Costa-Gavras, but it is the movie that captured him to the world's attention, winning a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It introduced the director's signature approach of combining overt political messages with edge-of-the-seat tension."^[5] After Z, their most widely recognized film together is probably Missing (1982). Their last film together was Mad City (1997).

Since 1997, Bonnot has edited the films directed by Julie Taymor, who had been known primarily as a stage director. Their films include Frida (2002) and The Tempest (2010).

Bonnot won the Academy Award for Film Editing for Z (1969), and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing for Missing (1982). She has been nominated three times for the César Award for Best Editing (for The Simple Past (1977), Hannah K. (1983), and Place Vendôme (1998). She has been elected to membership in the American Cinema Editors.^[3][6]

Bonnot and Henri Verneuil had a son, Patrick Malakian, who is a film director.

See also

• List of film director and editor collaborations

References

Further reading

• Michalczyk, John J. (1984). Costa-Gavras, The Political Fiction Film. Art Alliance Press. p. 45. ISBN 9780879820299. http://books.google.com/books?id=BLsdAAAAMAAJ. "A permanent fixture in the cinema world of Costa-Gavras has been Françoise Bonnot, the editor responsible for infusing life into Semprún-Solinas text and the Costa-Gavras filming."  Discusses Bonnot's role in Costa-Gavras' films.
• Army of Shadows (DVD). The Criterion Collection. 15 May 2007.  This DVD edition has an eleven minute interview with Bonnot. A blu-ray version was released on 11 January 2011.