Editing
Renée Lichtig
Born February 18, 1921 — died October 16, 2007 · Shanghai, China
Renée Lichtig is one of the major figures of film editing and restoration in France. Born in Shanghai to a Russian mother, she spent her childhood in China before moving to France in the 1930s. The tragic death of her father, an electrical engineer, in a nitrate‑film fire deeply shaped her relationship to cinema and fueled her later commitment to film preservation. She began as an intern at the Épinay studios and then became a film editor. Her half‑sister, Lucie Lichtig, was a script supervisor; together, they collaborated on numerous shoots, notably with Nicholas Ray. Thanks to Henri Langlois… Renée Lichtig is one of the major figures of film editing and restoration in France. Born in Shanghai to a Russian mother, she spent her childhood in China before moving to France in the 1930s. The tragic death of her father, an electrical engineer, in a nitrate‑film fire deeply shaped her relationship to cinema and fueled her later commitment to film preservation. She began as an intern at the Épinay studios and then became a film editor. Her half‑sister, Lucie Lichtig, was a script supervisor; together, they collaborated on numerous shoots, notably with Nicholas Ray. Thanks to Henri Langlois, she assisted Erich von Stroheim in the restoration of La Symphonie nuptiale (1954), a formative experience.
In the following years, she worked with several major filmmakers, including Jean Renoir, with whom she collaborated on his last three films. Her reputation as a rigorous and inventive editor quickly spread, both in France and internationally. In 1978, she joined the Cinémathèque française, where she headed a unit responsible for checking film prints and devoted herself to heritage restoration. She reconstructed more than a hundred films, including Casanova (1927) by Alexandre Volkoff, screened in 1986 with a score by Georges Delerue. Her preservation work was recognized far beyond France: in 2023, she received the Jean Mitry Award from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, honoring her lifelong contribution to the memory of cinema.More
