Renée Lichtig

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...