The invisible cut: Elena Maganini, who edited Henry and the Dexter pilot, dead at 70

Elena Maganini, the film and television editor who cut Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and won an Emmy for the Dexter pilot, died on October 21 at 70, Variety reported. ^[1]

The trade paper's obituary, published November 2, gives the place as Burbank and the cause as complications of breast cancer. ^[1] Variety is the source for the death and for every credit below. Neither Maganini nor anyone who worked with her is quoted in it, so what follows about the craft is this paper's own view, and nothing here claims to know which frames she chose.

A memorial is announced for November 15 at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. ^[1]

What an editor actually does

A director shoots hours of footage for every minute that survives. The editor chooses which take of an actor's face to use, where a scene begins and where it lets go, and how long the camera stays on a reaction before moving on.

A look held for a second is a look. Held for three, it is a threat. Cut away too early, and the moment never happened.

That is the whole trick, and the whole difficulty. When the work succeeds, the audience credits the actor for the hesitation, the director for the chill, the writer for the joke. The decision about timing belonged to someone in a dark room, playing the same few seconds of film hundreds of times. An editor's art is mostly in what was left out, and we are poor at remembering what we were never shown.

Chicago, and a very dark first feature

Maganini was born in Chicago, graduated from the University of Illinois and studied filmmaking at Columbia College in Chicago. ^[1] She began her career at a Chicago production company, Sinnot & Associates. ^[1]

Her first feature credit came in 1986 with John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. ^[1] The title alone tells you the film was not built to comfort anyone. Material of that kind lives or dies on rhythm, on how much the audience is made to sit with and how much it is spared.

The film also began a partnership. Variety lists several more McNaughton pictures among her credits: Mad Dog & Glory, Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll, The Borrower, Speaking of Sex, Lansky and Wild Things. ^[1] A director and an editor who work together over that many films develop a private language, a shared sense of when a scene has said what it came to say. Nobody outside the room can see that language. The films are the only record of it.

From the margins to the multiplex

Set the early and later titles side by side and the range is striking. Henry is a small, austere film with a title that reads like a case file. Wild Things is a different animal, a glossier picture in a different register. ^[1]

Her feature work also took in Next Friday and Ed Gein. ^[1] Those are different tones, different audiences and different demands on pace. Serving all of them takes an ear for what each story needs, not a single house style.

If These Walls Could Talk was another kind of project, an anthology about abortion directed by Cher and Nancy Savoca and starring Catherine Keener, Demi Moore and Shirley Knight. ^[1] Maganini was nominated for an Emmy and a Cable ACE Award for it. ^[1] An anthology is an editor's puzzle. Separate stories must feel like one film, and the weight of each has to land without tipping into speech-making.

The Dexter pilot

The Emmy came for the pilot of Dexter. Variety's obituary does not say in which year or in which category. ^[1]

The choice of episode is telling. A pilot is the hardest hour in television. It has to introduce a world, a tone and a main character, and persuade a viewer to come back next week, all before anyone knows what the show is.

Dexter asked viewers to follow a killer as its hero. A premise like that depends on how the first hour is paced, and on what the viewer is allowed to feel about the man at its centre.

She began with a film about a serial killer and won her Emmy on a series whose lead is one. That is a coincidence of subject, and it is a pleasing one. Few careers make such material watchable without making it comfortable, and hers ran from one end of that problem to the other.

The long list

Her later television credits include Madam Secretary, Good Behavior, Clarice, Manifest and The Cleaning Lady. ^[1] She was also a member of American Cinema Editors, the honorary society of her trade. ^[1]

Read that list again. It runs from a film about a killer to a network drama about a secretary of state and a series about a cleaning lady. Prestige and procedural, cable and broadcast, all passed through one editor's hands. That is how the industry works. Most of what people watch is held together by professionals who are known inside the business and nowhere else.

Who is left behind

Variety reports that Maganini is survived by her husband, Scott Collins, her daughter Gabriella Coronel and her daughter-in-law Adrienne Coronel. ^[1] The obituary suggests donations to Columbia College Chicago, where she studied, or to two animal charities, Tree House Humane Society and Stray Cat Alliance. ^[1]

What to watch next is small. The family, the editors' guild or the Television Academy may confirm the details, including the year of the Dexter award. The memorial on November 15 may bring remarks from the directors and actors whose work she cut, and those would be the first words on record about how she did it.