Thelma Schoonmaker and the Scorsese rhythm

Thelma Schoonmaker has cut almost every Martin Scorsese feature since Raging Bull (1980). They met in the 1960s, and she edited his first feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door. What followed became one of cinema's longest creative partnerships.

Raging Bull is the proof. The fight scenes are built from short, violent bursts, sped up, slowed down and cut with a feel for rhythm closer to music than sport. It earned her the first of three Oscars.

She won the others for The Aviator (2004) and The Departed (2006). Her style stays flexible: swirling and kinetic in Goodfellas, tense and clean in The Departed, long and patient in Killers of the Flower Moon.

Schoonmaker also carries the influence of Michael Powell, the British filmmaker she married, whose films with Emeric Pressburger showed Scorsese how color and movement can carry emotion. The lesson for editors: serve the feeling of the scene first and the rules second.