Gerry Hambling

Gerry Hambling (14 June 1926 – 5 February 2013) was a British film editor whose work is credited on 49 films; he had also worked as a sound editor and a television editor. Hambling's editing of three films, The Commitments (1991), Mississippi Burning (1988), and Midnight Express (1978), has been honored by BAFTA Awards for Best Editing.

In 1976, Hambling began a notable collaboration with the director Alan Parker that extended over nearly all of Parker's films. The three BAFTA awards noted above were all for films directed by Parker. Chris Routledge has described their collaboration as follows: "The collaboration with Parker has ranged widely, from the musical Bugsy Malone, through the partly animated Pink Floyd The Wall, to the grim Angel Heart and the strange story of The Road to Welville. They have been particularly successful with musicals, Hambling's talent for creating the illusion of movement proving useful where musical performances appear in films such as The Commitments, which Lawrence O'Toole called "a great swim for the eyeballs." Perhaps because of their experience in advertising, Parker's slick and striking images combine well with Hambling's intuitive sense of pace and rhythm, for example in the otherwise problematic Fame, and in the much trailed, but poorly received Evita."

In addition to the three BAFTA Awards, Hambling had been nominated for the BAFTA award for three additional films (Fame, Another Country, and Evita). Six films edited by Hambling were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Midnight Express, Fame, Mississippi Burning, The Commitments, In the Name of the Father, and Evita). Hambling had been elected to membership in the American Cinema Editors. Mississippi Burning won the ACE Eddie Award, and in 1998, Hambling was honored with the American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award.

According to Alan Parker, by the time Hambling retired in 2003 he was one of just two editors still cutting film manually using a Moviola machine; the other being Michael Kahn, Steven Spielberg's editor. He died in 2013 at the age of 86.

Filmography
The director of each film is indicated in parentheses.
 * 1956   Dry Rot (Elvey)
 * 1958   The Whole Truth (Guillermin)
 * 1958   Sally's Irish Rogue (Pollock)
 * 1959   Left Right and Centre (Gilliat)
 * 1960   The Bulldog Breed (Asher)
 * 1961   The Kitchen (Hill)
 * 1962   She'll Have to Go (also known as Maid for Murder) (Asher)
 * 1963   A Stitch in Time (Asher)
 * 1965   The Early Bird (Asher); The Intelligence Men (Asher)
 * 1966   Press for Time (Asher); That Riviera Touch (Owen)
 * 1967   The Magnificent Two (Owen)
 * 1969   The Adding Machine (Epstein)
 * 1970   Some Will, Some Won't (Wood)
 * 1976   Bugsy Malone (Parker)
 * 1977   The Brute (O'Hara)
 * 1978   Midnight Express (Parker)
 * 1980   Fame (Parker)
 * 1981   Heartaches (Shebib)
 * 1982   Pink Floyd – The Wall (Parker); Shoot the Moon (Parker)
 * 1984   Another Country (Kanievska); Birdy (Parker)
 * 1985   Invitation to the Wedding (Brooks)
 * 1986   Absolute Beginners (Temple)
 * 1987   Angel Heart (Parker); Leonard Part 6 (Weiland)
 * 1988   Mississippi Burning (Parker)
 * 1989   Fragments of Isabella (O'Leary)
 * 1990   Come See the Paradise (Parker)
 * 1991   The Commitments (Parker)
 * 1992   City of Joy (La Cité de la joie) (Joffé)
 * 1993   In the Name of the Father (Sheridan)
 * 1994   The Road to Wellville (Parker)
 * 1996   Evita  (Parker); White Squall (Scott)
 * 1997   The Boxer (Sheridan)
 * 1998   Talk of Angels (Hamm)
 * 1999   Angela's Ashes (Parker)
 * 2002   Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War (Sharp)
 * 2003   The Life of David Gale (Parker)